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GALVESTO.V-PAST AND PRESENT. 



^hc ©nijclhartJt -Series : 'American ®i<ic0. 

By Andrew Morrison. 



n 



IThe Port of Galveston. 



g^HATEVER geographical or social distinctions were once defined by 

^ ^^ the terms " the East " and " the West " applied to the States of the 
Union, they describe now, sections, in many particulars, of widely 
variant industrial conditions. The two divisions have the common bond of 
federation and nationality, but their commercial interests, over so vast a realm, 
are far from identical, and in many respects are decidedly antagonistic; just 
as debtor and creditor have amicable relations, but occupy adverse ground. 

The East is compactly peopled. The West, while a fourth at least, of the 
inhabitants of the country, is dispersed over its prodigious area, is but sparsely 
settled yet. The East has its lands partitioned, and, as a whole, highly cultivated 
and improved. The West has spacious provinces still unconditioned, and an 
agriculture involving, in many parts, costly works of irrigation and novel meth- 
ods 'of tilth. The East has its resources largely determined and utilized. The 
West is revealed, by the shallow surveyance already made, and not half its 
superficies fairly explored, indescribably endued with natural wealth. 

The East dominates in trade, manufactures, finance, transportation, and coun- 
cils of State. And the West, with its infant industries and inceptive projects, is 
chiefly indebted to it for the means to pursue them, as it likewise is for the migra- 
tion, which, proceeding out of the older States, arterializes the new. The East 
has splendid and opulent cities, adorned with the triumphs of architecture and art ; 
great capitals of fashion and luxury, as well as of commerce; established -.en- 
ters of institutions and ripened civilization. In the West, where all is evolution 
and transition, the essays at these, in the main, are inconsiderable yet. The one, 
in short, is the blossom of progress; the other its bloom. 

But the blossom is one of glorious promise as a full-blown flower. The West, 
we may assume for argument's sake, is the trans-Mississippi region, although it 
may be more accurately divided perhaps, at the 92nd Meridian, from which the 
industrial conditions graduate, much like the modifications of climate from the 



equatorial line. This West then, beyond the Mississi})pi, embraces 820,000,000 acres 
or G7 per cent of the Union. It has a demesne of forest broader than all the British 
Isles. It is the principal source of the World's supply of the precious metals. 
Colonization of it proceeds faster than anywhere else on Earth. And measured 
by the productive capacity of an equal area of Europe, it would support easily, 
if its arable lands were as thoroughly tilled, 240,000,000 souls. 

With a little less population than Spain — about 15,000,000, — it had a sur- 
plus of the staples of husbandry in 1889, worth more than the entire revenue 
of that proud and ancient power. The estimate of its production of the fovir 
leading staples that year, in round numbers was : Cattle 4,990,000, cotton 2,000,000 
bales, wheat 242,000,000 bushels, corn 1,001,500,000 bushels. The estimated 
excess of these products over consumption was 4,170,000 cattle, 1,950,000 bales of 
cotton, 169,000,000 bushels of wheat, and 785,500,000 bushels of corn; or reduced 
to tons, 28,637,722, enough to freight 9,545 vessels of 3,000 tons each. 

And yet, notwithstanding this extraordinary surplus, farm mortgages accumu- 
late the labors of Sisyphus for the cultivators of the soil in some of the most fruitful 
districts of the West, and they have been driven to the expedient of making a fuel 
of their corn. Multifarious circumstances conjoined, have produced this situa- 
tion, but the opinion is concurrent that it arises largely from inadequate outlets 
for exportation. The ports of the Pacific are too far distant from the World's 
great markets to be generally available. Those of the Lakes are winter-ljound, 
and those of the Gulf and Southeastern seaboard, of insufhcient accommodations 
for the shipping required. And although the West has a quarter of the railroad 
mileage of the world, and nearly half of that in the country at large, transporta- 
tion charges, over the distances that must be traversed to the North Atlantic 
Coasts, are practically an emijargo upon its foreign trade. 

The West, clamoring, by special convention, for removal of these disabilities 
has been heard at the seat of government. A commission of Engineers, ordered 
to find, on the Texas Coast, a site for a harbor nearest to all points inland beyond 
the Mississippi, has made choice of the Port of Galvkstox. That city, slowly, 
accreting, like the shelf of the sea on wliich it is founded, lias Ijeen known hitlierto 
as the furthermost American cotton port, second in rank of those in tiie South, 
and as the foremost city of Texas. Tlie certainty of an appropriation of $6,200,- 
000 by Congress, to complete the improvement of its harl)or, long under way, 
ordains it, at length, the Seaport of the West, and unfolds it a destiny of mar- 
itime ascendancy, of grandeur and of power. 




GALVESTON BRIEFLY DESCRIBED. 




THE ISLAND, BAY AND PORT. 

ALVESTON ISLAND rises 
from the foam of the Mex- 
ican Gulf, where it lashes 
the coast of Texas, about 
sixty miles southwest from 
the Louisiana line, a long, 
low, narrow bank of sand, stretching, as 
it seems from the open sea, leviathan-like, 
motionless, upon the heaving waters. It 
bears away from Northeast to Southwest, 
with an extreme width of three miles and 
length of twenty-eight, and lies so low that 
a single fathom's rise of the inconstant 
sea, might easily submerge it. Bolivar 
Peninsula, a slender strip of the mainland, 
prolonged Southwest so that it nearly 
aligns it, is the counterpart of the island 
in all but complete isolation, and these 
two natural storm-barriers, breakwater 
the bay of Galveston, which has an area 
of 455 square miles. The entrance to the 
bay is between them. It is about a mile 
and a-half wide, and has thirteen and a 
quarter feet least depth at the bar. Just 
inside it is the harbor, a basin, by official 
measurement, affording 463 acres of thirty- 
foot anchorage, and 1,304 of twenty-four. 
Government improvements of both bar 
and channel are now in progress. 

The Island itself is largely desert, and 
as rude a creation as ever was summoned 
out of the depths. Artesian soundings 



disclose it a concreted mass of marine 
debris, clay-marl chiefly, thinly coated 
with sand and disintegrated shell. Inlets, 
bayous and lakes intersect it, but much of 
its surface is as barren as if fresh from old 
Neptune's hand. It is however, gener- 
ally, though scantily clothed, with stunted 
sylva and indigenous brush, and the gay 
patches of garden and thrifty truck farms, 
scattered here and there upon it, are indi- 
cations that its soil is kindlier disposed to 
verdure, than at the fii'st sight it would 
seem. And out of this same sterile soil, 
at the uppermost end of the Island, 
spreading the full width of it there from 
bay shore to sea shore, up springs the 
city of Galveston, the very flower of 
Texas cities, expanding gloriously, if 
slowly, among the brilliant blossoms of 
Civilization in that garden of the South- 
west, like its own oleander, the South 
Sea rose. 

Very lovely is Galveston, this Oleander 
City of Texas, far from destitute of either 
picturesque prospects or urban charms. 
Far different too, its aspects, from those 
at its genesis, in IS37, when it was visited 
by the distinguished ornithologist Audo- 
bon, who, beholding nothing more invit- 
ing, of its site, than marsh and mud flat, 
and its only rara avis disporting in the 
well-ruftled plumage of the then new- 
made Lone Star Republic, " was not 
much impressed with the place." The 
morass he saw has been converted since, 



6 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



partly by filling and partly by dredging, 
into solid quays and docks, along which 
compact lines of warehouses, compresses, 
factories and freight yards, stretch away 
for a couple of miles. 

The languor of a perennial summer 
land may pervade its embowered resi- 
dence precincts, but the port of Galveston 
is instinct everywhere with varied phases 
of maritime traffic. Out here on the 
wharves, where the welkin creaks, like a 



land ; and here, where swart Piscator is 
idling the hours away angling for crabs 
and pan-fish, the mosquito fleet, a maze 
of coasters, steam and sail, is relieved of 
its burthens, — shingles and cordwood 
from the Sabine region, sugars from Bra- 
zoria, wool and hides and horns from 
Corpus Christi, Black Warrior coals, and 
Kennebec ice, cedars and fustic, perhaps, 
from the Carib Sea, and Mexican ixtle. 
At all these docks, shipping and rail- 




RESIDENCK OF A 



plague of frogs, with the echoes of maul 
and capstan and horse-hoist, drowning the 
hoarse rejoinders of seamen to landsmen, 
and the air is heavy with odors of hemp 
and tar and bilgy effluvia, brawny black- 
skinned longshoremen swarm, dispatching 
the lading of sea-tramps. It is here that 
the cotton and cotton-oil cake, destined to 
feed the looms and the herds of Europe, 
is exchanged for the wines of Bordeaux, 
the coffees of Rio, the hardware of Shef- 
field, the Portland cements, and the tiles 
and glassware of Antwerp. 

It is there yonder, the shallops' land, 
with the ovsters and truck of the main- 



road meet, and all along shore, are scenes 
of animation and bustle and commotion. 
Even there, out where Ariel sportively 
ripples the stream, eddying the scum and 
the drift ashore, where the passing cloud 
and the bellying sail, and " the yachts that 
flout with pinions spread, like the birds 
of passage overhead, are imaged faintly 
as in a glass" — there too are puffing tugs 
in their harness of hemp, with funnels 
belching inky smoke, straining away at 
ponderous tows, as if perforce, they must 
bear them bodily out to sea. For it is at 
the port of Galveston, that as exuberant 
an emperv of Nature as there is in the 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



New World, pours, from its horn of 
plenty, its contributions of textiles 
and provisions and breadstuffs, to 
clothe and sustain and enrich the 
Old. 

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS. 

The traveler approachingj Gal- 
veston from the mainland by rail. 
over either of the trestles that bridge 
the shoals of the bay, beholds the 
city first in the least inviting of its 
aspects. But, as the docks where 
the depot is, draw nigh, it is evident 
that the salt ponds and tide lands, 
that are such conspicuous features of 
the landscape, have commercial, if 
not picturesque perspectives. This 
part of the city is given over for 
terminal grounds, to the three great 
Southwestern railroad systems, — 
Gould's, the Southern Pacific and 
Santa Fe, — that connect at the 
wharves with the merchantmen fre- 
quenting the port. 

Our passenger by train is deposited in 





NEW CITY HALL. 



RESIDENCE OF G. H MENSING, OF MENSING BROS. & CO. 



the midst of the business quarter, which, 
with its salients of water front piers and 
causeway, is projected over the area of at 
least a hundred squares. The wholesale 
district covers, compactly, twenty-five of 
these. Imposing magasins of trade, 
here, in one instance extending the full 
length of a block, give to this part of the 
city a decidedly metropolitan character, 
and it is easy to credit the statement, in 
view of the show the warehouses make, 
that three of the jobbing houses of the 
city do a business aggregating $6,500,000 
a year. One street, the Strand, so-called 
because it marks the inner line of reclama- 
tions from the bay, is occupied generally 
by the houses engaged in the various 
branches of the traffic in cotton — factors, 
exporters, buyers, brokers and the like. 
The offices of the steamship lines that 
carry the staple as freight, the importers, 
the banking, insurance and other financial 
concerns of the city, are also upon it, or 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



on the parallel thoroughfare beyond, and 
the intersecting streets. Factories and 
cotton, coal, and lumber yards, flank this 



board and crystal glazing ; which glazing 
mirrors the passing throng. 

And images all the contrasts of condi- 




RESIUEN'CE OF GEORGE SEALY, OF BALL, HUTCHINGS 4; CO., BANKERS. 



district as far out as the new manufactur- 
ing quarter of the West End. 

Back of this realm of Commerce-in- 
Bulk, is its life-like diminutive, the 
domain of the shop-keeper of Galveston. 
Here, aggregated upon three long, and 
from the rectangular plan of the city sur- 
vey, straight streets, are representatives of 
all the ancient and honorable guilds and 
crafts, antedating the rise of the jobber: 
Messrs. Mercer and Draper and Cord- 
wainer — next neighbors to Mme. !Modiste 
and M, Perruquier, — Sir Leech and Sir 
Knight of St. Ci'ispin. Or, to descend 
from metaphor to every day terms, the 
quarter of retail dry goods dealers, gro- 
cers, shoemakers, milliners, druggists, 
pawn-brokers, barbers, restaurants and 
hotels. Here are the big department 
stores, carrying as varied a stock in trade 
as anywhere under the sun, gay with 
extrinsic embellishment of gilded sign- 



tion, complexion, occupation, and cos- 
tume, a Southern seaport can show: 
Sailors in shore togs, cowboys in from the 
range; hawkers of smuggled fabrics, 
fakirs, tourists, mendicants ; darkies in 
tatters, butterflies of fashion tricked out 
in the latest mode ; fustian and jeans 
everywhere elbowing purple and fine 
linen, like the push-carts in the roadway 
obstructing the progress of the sumptuous 
equipages of wealth and state. All this 
and very much more, instantaneously 
imprinted ; and disclosed by the sunlight 
flashing alternately from show window 
on this side, to show window on that. 
Ending here where honest traffic degener- 
ates into pitfalls for Jack Ashore. And 
exhibiting, side by side, the social extremes 
of city life. 

Nothing provincial the night scenes 
here, in the balmy winter season, when 
the cotton "is moving" and the streets 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



9 



are alive with " samplers " and " screw- 
men," spending prodigally a weekly 
stipend that would be considered a hand- 
some recompense in many of the learned 
professions. Nothing apparent here that 
the retail trade of the city is circumscribed 
at all by its insular position, as by some 
it is said to be. Crowds on the corner, 
at yon stand of the pinchbeck vendor. 
Crowds at the theatre door. Crowds 
surging by. Shop doors wide open. 
Lights. Music. A little Vanity Fair, 
like Broadway and the Bowery in minim. 
Galveston, as yet, makes little preten- 
sion to the monumental in architecture. 
It has some types, however, distinctive 
among its public edifices, for a certain 
strength of design and simple effective- 
ness, if not also of- grace and originality. 
The Cotton Exchange is one of these, 
and is also a building becoming the rank 



of the port in the trade. The Custom 
House, with its shapely tower, is a some- 
what stately structure, and there are ele- 
ments, at least, of the impressive in the 
long facades of the Ball and Rosenberg 
Schools, to which an additional interest 
attaches, in the fact that they were gifts 
from the public-minded millionaire resi- 
dents, whose names they respectively 
bear. Many of the business fronts of 
Galveston are disfigured by the ever-pres- 
ent wooden awning, extending out to the 
curb. The elevations of the Masonic 
Temple are thus barbarously obscured. 

The forty-three residence blocks of 
Galveston, swept clean by the fire of 
1SS5, have been almost entirely rebuilt. 
This restoration has been made in the 
architectural styles prevailing since, and 
it has given to the residence quarter, in 
conjunction with the additional* building 




JOHN SEALY HOSPITAL AND STATE MEDICAL COLLEGE. 



10 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



improvements of the last few years, a 
new and modern face. Some few exam- 
ples are left yet, however, of the old time 
broad-verandaed, Grecian pillared, South- 
ern home, sun^iving amidst its surround- 
ings of innovation and transition, like its 
occupants of the old school, in a new day 
and generation. The costly mansions of 
Galveston, new and old, bear out the 
assertion frequently made, that the city, 
long since recovered from the waste of 
war, is, for its population, one of the 
richest in the world. There are two at 
least of its homes, the Gresham and Sealy 
residences, truly palatial. 

In August, iSS6, a phenomenal tidal 
wave crept into the very heart of the 
city, nipping in its course, as if by a 
Northern frost, the beautiful but tender 
oleanders that formerly hedged the high- 
ways. It is to be regretted that they were 
never replanted in the streets ; but they 
flourish again as luxuriantly as of old. 
along with the rose, the magnolia and 
jasmine, in every garden. Such an 
encroachment of old Ocean is unlikely 
to happen again, for the island is be- 
yond the usual path of the eciuinoctial 
storms, and the formation of the beach 
is such as to break the force of the angry 
waves. 

And such a beach as it is I Stretching 
for thirty miles, from end to end of the 
island. A firm, hard driveway, smoother 
than any asphalted road. And breaking 
upon it, its entire length, a surf, in which 
all the sun-baked denizens of midland 
Texas might disport, if they wished. 
With its Beach Hotel and Pagoda baths 
for these sojourners. Boulevard, sea- 
ward prospect and public baths, within 
the very gates of the city. A Commons 
such as no other possesses. And over all 
the radiant Southern sun, his beams tem- 
pered by the cool Gulf breeze. Over all 
the blue empyrean or the star-lit vault. 
And in this setting, Galveston, the Gem 
of the Gulf. 



HISTORY AXD GROWTH. 

The Island of Galveston figures in 
American history first in the romantic age 
of Spanish discovery, and it has been the 
scene of casual events that incidentally, 
but inseparably connect it, with the rise 
and decline of the Spanish power. 

While the all-conquering Hernan Cortes 
was still engaged in subjugation of the 
Aztecs, Pineda, a captain in the service 
of the governor of Jamaica, was circum- 
navigating the Gulf from Yucatan to 
Florida ; seeking, in accordance with the 
dim impressions prevailing then respecting 
the continent, a passage to the Pacific, and 
thence to the Indies. He explored care- 
fully every bav and inlet on his way ; 
among the rest, doubtless, the bay of Gal- 
veston. 

In 1537, Narvaez was commissioned to 
extend the Empire of Charles the Fifth in 
the unknown lands of, the West. The 
circumstances of his ai^pointment made 
him the especial rival of Cortes, by whom, 
on a prior occasion, his projects were 
boldly thwarted, and he himself returned 
amain to port from the high seas. He set 
sail this time, however, from Cuba, in 
force, but the strength of his expedition 
was very much wasted by innumerable 
adversities sustamed in the Everglades of 
Florida ; and he finally entrusted his per- 
son and fortunes, in a frail makeshift of a 
craft, ont of a number of cockles com- 
prising his fleet, to the open Gulf — a 
gulf destined to be a Gulf of Oblivion for 
liim, in wliich his star should be extin- 
guished forever. 

In a terrible storm, somewhere off the 
moutlis of the Mississippi, his boat 
foundered, and he was drowned; and the 
expedition was scattered, literally to the 
four winds of heaven. A single boat's- 
crew of survivors sought refuge on Gal- 
veston Island — a sorry enough asylum, 
betwixt the range of the red cannibals of 
the mainland, and the deep sea. The 



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'^fe5^1!i 







12 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



savages at first treated them with kindness, 
but afterwards with extreme cruelty, pro- 
voked very likely, by their own ungra- 



The Isle of Misfortune, Galveston 
remained, until, in course of time, that 
disparaging title was converted into Isla 




RESIDENCE OF B. ADOUE, BANKER. 



cious conduct. A remnant of fourteen 
was held in captivity for six long years, 
and in remembrance of their sufferings, 
past and present, they called their prison 
Misfortune Island. 

Four, at length escaped, de Vaca, 
Castillo, Dorantes and a negro, and beset 
with perils all the way, traversed, in the 
guise of " medicine men," the wearisome 
breadth of the continent, to the settle- 
ments of their kinsmen on the Gulf of 
California. There, afterward, the negro 
enlisted with Coronado for that chimerical 
quest of his, of the fabled Madre de Oro, 
and its seven treasure cities of Cibolo ; in 
pursuance of which wild goose chase, he 
is believed to have scaled the lofty peaks 
of Colorado, and crossed the trackless 
prairies of Kansas. Thus, three centuries 
and a half ago, the first Christian denizen 
of the Island, penetrated the hostile 
regions that are bound now to Galveston, 
with iron bands of trade. 



Blanca, an epithet suggested doubtless, 
to the mariners of the Gulf, by its barren 
stretches of sea-bleached sand. And at 
some particularly propitious phase of the 
seasons, it must have been, that it was 
styled, again, the Isle of Ai-anjuez, which 
name, a corruption of the Latin for "Altar 
of Jove," was borrowed from a charming 
resort of the Spanish court. The bav, 
meanwhile, had been christened Espiritu 
Santo, a name profaned, while it served 
to harbor those scourges of the Spanish 
Main, the Dutch and English and mongrel 
buccaneers of the seventeenth and eight- 
eenth centuries. It was surveyed, in 
1783, by order of Viceroy Galves, some- 
time also,du ring the Spanish regime. 
Governor of Louisiana ; in a long line of 
incompetents and corruptibles, one man, 
at least, of honor and abilities and action. 
From him, island and bay and city have 
finally derived the modern appellation, 
which is one and the same for all three. 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



13 



And now enters upon the scene, an 
erratic, an extraordinary personage. Not 
to say an enigmatical also. The most 
singular in all these chronicles of Galves- 
ton. Interesting and picturesque, like 
Robin Hood and Rob Roy, whom he may 
some day rival in song and story, to a 
humdrum and prosaic age like this. But 
not perhaps to be judged by iis standards ; 
by those rather of the season and the cir- 
cumstances of which he was the product. 
Jean Lafitte, the outlaw of Barataria. 
Lafitte, smuggler, slaver and privateers- 
man. Pirate, perhaps, also. Who 
knows } 

And yet, no less a judge of men, and 
of mettle too, be it said, than Old Hickory 
himself, clasped hands with this same 
Jean Lafitte, and entrusted a post to him, 
as honorable as dangerous, the command 
of the artillery, on that field, memorable 
to our cousins-german the British, the 



ers there, procured straightway from the 
master of the White House then, an 
amnesty for all their past offenses — 
offenses, prosecutions for which, instituted 
by Governor Claiborne, of Louisiana, 
were then hanging over their heads. 

Fiction blends easily with the facts of 
history in the accounts of such a man. 
In person, tall, of course, handsome, 
symmetrical and stately. In manners, 
bland and dignified and courtly. In char- 
acter, reserved and silent ; not without 
policy ; as absolutely correct in his habits 
as his attire. In action, intrepid. And 
terrible as a lion when roused. The 
conventional attributes — fashionable in 
dress, easy in deportment, French in 
accent, polished and fluent in conversa- 
tion, agreeable, and if need be, generous ; 
but inexorable when occasion required. 
And born to rule. " The front of Jove, 
Hyperion curls, an eye " — he had a habit 




Kt:.-5lDENCE UF CAIT. CHAS. FOWLER, 
AGENT OF THE MORGAN LINE OF STEAMERS. 



field of Chalmette, the field of the de- 
cisive battle of New Orleans. And the 
services rendered bv him and his follow- 



of drooping the lid of one, — " like Mars 
to threaten and command." Romance, 
truly, enwreathshim, with its immortelles. 



14 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



'•A stray sheep" he calls himself, in 
his correspondence with Claiborne, ''wish- 
ing to return to the sheep-fold." A 
sailor " under the flag of the Republic of 
Cartagenia," and w-ith papers regularly 
drawn. "A loyal citizen still," if he has 
" evaded " the payment of customs — the 
said evasions consisting in armed resist- 
ance to authority as w^ell as contraband 
trade. All his offenses " forced upon 
him by certain vices of the laws." He 
and his adherents " still worthy to dis- 
charge the duties of citizens : still ready 
to exert their utmost efforts in defense 
of their country," provided., ah! pro- 
vided: "a stop is put to the proscrip- 
tions against them." And declaring in a 
fine spirit of afnor patrice, that if an act of 
oblivion introduced in the Territorial 
legislature by his friend, John Blanque,and 
urged by his lawyer, Edward Livingston, 
fails to receive executive sanction, that he 
will " instantly leave the country, to avoid 
the imputation of having co-operated 
toward an invasion which cannot fail to 
take place, and, so rest secure in the 
accjuittal of conscience." 

Claiborne is charged with a sort of 
activity in this matter, pernicious in war 
time ; but properly conscientious, and 
thoroughly patriotic on both sides, are the 
negotiations throughout. Was it that 
Jackson recognized in the smuggler chief 
a kindred spirit } Or merely a knight in 
the great chess game he must play.'' Cer- 
tain it is, at all events, that Lafitte rejected 
some very tempting Bi-itish bribes. And 
whatever his sins in the eyes of the law, 
they were countenanced, and justified, by 
many of the honest men of his day ; were 
such, in fact, as the accompanying cir- 
cumstances extenuate, if they do not en- 
tirely efface. 

By virtue of his Cartagenian letters of 
marque, Lafitte took possession of Gal- 
veston Island in 1S17. What need of 
more formal title r Don Luis Aury, 
grandiose as ''commodore of the com- 



bined fleets of Mexico, New Granada 
Venezuela and La Plata," did indeed 
claim prior occupation, but his pay chest 
was exhausted, and his paymaster took 
service with the new Lord of the Isle. 
Under whose banner too, soon assembled 
as motley, as precious a lot of rascals — 
adventurers, refugees, outlaws, cutpurses, 
of every empire and rule, and past mas- 
ters in every degree of crime, as ever con- 
sorted in frontier camp, which, in its gam- 
ing and drinking and brawling. Cam- 
peachy, Lafitte's settlement, somewhat 
resembled. 

But a decent semblance of order was 
strictly enforced. And by one man's will 
was the simple but ample code main- 
tained. With neither scepter, nor crozier, 
nor Senate, nor gray goose quill, nor yet 
with my ladies fan, did our Caesar reign 
supreme. And yet by a moral suasion 
that had the weight of lictor's rods. In 
the midst of the town a gallows was 
raised, from which, significant of the 
master's displeasure, once dangled the 
body of a certain Captain Brown, who 
had been guilty of depredations on the 
soil of the Union, contrary to orders. 
When the officers of the United States 
came to 'demand him, the corpus delicti 
w^is gravely delivered to them, with judg- 
ment duly certified. A whole decalogue 
of injunctions was condensed in that leaf- 
less gallow-trec. Barring Lafitte, the 
place was the ideal commune. Liberty. 
Equality and Fratei'nity — share and share 
alike, — of toil, of hazard, of hardship, and 
of rich reward. 

The usual population of Canipeachy 
was about 1,000. Its commerce for the 
size of the place, was enormous. The 
waning marine of old Spain was fright- 
fully harried by the privateers of Cam- 
peachv. Hither flocked Puritan Boston, 
and Quaker Philadelphia, to mingle with 
the unregenerate and trade their produce 
for foreign brandies and fabrics. The 
old relations w^ith New Orleans were 



[ii'iiri IP PI I' iTi I'f 




16 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



renewed. But the most profitable traffic 
was in slaves. The Bowie Brothers, 
Resin, and Jim— he of the Alamo— were 
in it. 

vSuch was Galveston Island from 1S17 
to 183 1. Until, in fact, Lafitte's occupa- 
tion was rendered unprofitable by the 
acknowledgement of the independence 
of the Spanish colonies, and his location as 
untenable by the surveillance of the United 
States. He, therefore, piped a picked 
crew aboard his flag-ship, the Pride; 
applied the torch to Campeachy, and with 
white sails checkered against the blue 
void, soon left its red embers behind. 
But no memory of his exploits thereafter, 
good or ill, is embalmed now either in 
sea myth or Creole lore. Fading fast- 
fading — faded — out of mind, is Jean 
Lafitte, like the Pride vanishing upon the 
dim horizon that day. 

For fifteen years after Lafitte's depart- 
ure the Island was abandoned to the 
osprey and the sea mew. Austin pater 
fat rice of the Texans, endeavored to 
obtain a grant of it from the Mexican 
government, to found a city upon it, but 
was unsuccessful. In 1836-7 it was 
identified with the Texas revolution ; 
merely, however, as a haven for the 
dependents of the patriots in the field. 
The Ilium of that Homeric age was San 
Antonio. And as Troy's were to the 
Greeks, its traditions are likely to be an 
inspiration for the Texans, when its stones 
have crumbled. 

The city of Galveston was founded in 
1838 by Michael B. Menard, a French 
Canadian, who had been one of the most 
active partisans of the Lone Star Repub- 
lic. He paid the Republic $50,000 to 
confirm him the headright of Seguin, 
4,621 acres, the site of the city, and 
organized the City Company, from whom 
all the land titles of Galveston descend. 

Grim war discovered Galveston in i860, 
a busy city of 7,300 souls, with $10,000,- 
000 of aggregate annual trade. It left it in 



1865, pillaged, ravaged, and well-nigh 
desolated. It was alternately beleagured 
by North and South. And incidents of 
that unhappy period are, to many of its 
residents, living memories yet. With 
peace, however, prosperity returned. 
Recuperation thereafter was rapid. The 
steamship lines were re-established. The 
railroads projected before the war. from 
the city as a terminus, were constructed. 
The growth of the city since in popula- 
tion, trade and wealth, is due mainly to 
these augmented and still augmenting 
facilities for internal transportation, link- 
ing it to twenty-two States and Territories 
of the West, and to those of our neighbor 
of Mexico, where not even post roads 
were made before. 

In 1870 the population of Galveston 
was 13,898. Its aggregate business for 
the year was $18,320,000. In 1880 it had 
22,248 inhabitants and $30,000,000 of 
trade; $2,375,965 of that, the value of 
its manufactures. In 1885 the population 
was 40,000 and the trade $47,000,000. In 
1887, the fraction of commerce repre- 
sented in the cotton trade of the city was 
$35,000,000 alone. The wholesale trade 
w-as $20,000,000 besides, and the manufac- 
tured product, $3,315,000. The assessed 
valuations had been raised from $10,000,- 
000 in 1870 to $14,904,856 in 1880 and 
$21,000,000 in 1887, at which conserva- 
tive figure they have been continued 
since. 

The population, h\ the last (issued city 
directory, is 51,443; the jobbing trade, 
$25,000,000 ; the exports, foreign, $65,000,- 
000 ; the imports, foreign, $2,000.000 ; the 
domestic imports, including goods in transit 
and destined for California, the West and 
Mexico, $85,000,000. The bank clearances 
of 1889, were $70,000,000; the output of 
manufactures (estimated), $5,003,800. 
The progress of the city has been most 
notable in the traffic in cotton, exports of 
which were 800,000 bales in the season of 
1S89-90, nearly twice as much as in 1S80- 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



17 



8i ; in manufactures, which have increased 
in respect of product ii3 per cent in 
the last decade, and in shipments west- 
bound, in transit, the increase of which 
in late years has exceeded the most san- 
guine anticipations of the common car- 
riers, sail and rail. 

THE CITY AND THE W^EST. 

Vistas of a mighty Galveston in the 
future, are disclosed in this growth of the 
port as an entrepot and emporium for the 
West. For eighteen years the govern- 
ment has been engaged, in the desultory 
way characteristic of the execution of 
national improvements, in the work of 
removing the bar at the entrance to Gal- 
veston harbor, so as to make it a port of 
the first class, namely, one having thirty 
feet of water at its mouth. This work, 
as one affecting not merely local interests, 
but the commerce of half the Union, has 
never, until lately, received the attention 
it deserves. 

Efforts to hasten it have been per- 
sistently made by the city at successive ses- 
sions of Congress, but usually with little, 
and sometimes, no avail. The auxiliai-y 
work of the inside bar was undertaken by 
the city itself. Municipal moneys were 
also expended for professional opinions 
as to the feasibility of the undertaking in 
government hands. So eminent an engi- 
neer as the late Capt. Eads, was willing, 
in his lifetime, to contract for it, at the 
government's own figures ; but he declined 
to lobby a contract through. And the 
national appropriations for the work, 
meanwhile, were doled out with a sparing 
hand. 

Meanwhile, too, the Occident was com- 
pacting apace, — -in population, in indus- 
tries, in influence and in wealth. Its 
pastures were teeming with cattle. Its 
fields producing a superfluity of the sta- 
ples of export. Its mines and its woods as 
bountiful as its soil. But with its avenues 



to tidewater leading chiefly to the Atlantic, 
a long and costly haul, in some parts, 
particularly in Kansas, a strictly agricul- 
tural State, the conditions of production, 
transportation and market, approached 
the anomaly of famine impending where 
the granaries were fairly bursting with 
corn. This state of things was of vital 
concern to all ; it affected the railroad of 
the West, as well as the merchant and 
farmer. 

The West was roused to action. It 
met twice in convention. It secured an 
examination, by engineers, of the Texas 
coast, for a deep v/ater harbor. The engi- 
neers decided Galveston the only availa- 
ble point. The West urged upon Con- 
gress an appropriation of $6,300,000 to 
complete the work begun there. A bill, 
making this provision, has passed the 
Senate. It is pending, at this writing, in 
the House. The prospect is, that it will 
pass. 

CLIMATE, HEALTH, WATER SUPPLY. 

Winter and summer alike, the Gulf 
moderates the climate of Galveston, mak- 
ing it at once the pleasantest and healthi- 
est city of the South. But for its daily 
breeze the ardent addresses of Old Sol all 
summer long, would be almost unbear- 
able ; but for it the mistral of Texas, the 
" norther," descending regularly from the 
Dakotas during the winter, would robust- 
iously prevail. Drafts from the deep, 
cool in the hot season, warm in the cold, 
mollify them both. 

The maladies of the dog-star are rari- 
ties here. His flame is neutralized, for 
man and beast, in an atmosphere charged 
with ozone. And once only, within 
memory, has old Boreas invaded this 
province of Phoebus, on Christmas day of 
that winter of rigors, 1885, upon which 
occasion the shipping in the harbor was 
coated with ice ; a freak of the Frost King, 
impressive, to many of the i-esidents of the 



18 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



city, as the most signal meteorological 
manifestation of their lives. 

July is the hottest month at Galveston. 
Its maximum temperature is usually 93 : 
its average 83. The range of the ther- 
mometer in December, by reports of a 
term of vears, is between 18 and 72. and 
the mean temperature for that month is 
53. And though the island lies five de- 
grees to the north of the zone of the 
banana, its winter extreme of 18 degrees, 
permits that fruit to mature. 

Hvgeia has an ally here in Nature it- 
self ; in the sea and the soil and the savory 
air. The breeze, blowing steadily and un- 
obstructed over the low-lying island, bears 
away the noxious exhalations of the popu- 
lation. The porous sands of the site of 
the city, absorb, not only the surface 
drainage, but also the fifty inches of an- 
nual rainfall which is constantly leaching 
it out ; for Galveston has no public sewer 
system yet. Malaria is infrequent at Gal- 
veston. There are no diseases especi- 
ally prevalent. Quarantine, strictlv en- 
forced against all infected ports, is a 
sufficient barrier to Yellow Jack. Natur- 
ally one of the healthiest cities in the 
world, the death rate of Galveston, four- 
teen to the thousand, is lower than that of 
any seaport of the land, 

A general water supply, which was long 
a desideratum hardly second in import- 
ance to improvement of the harbor, has 
been provided by sinking artesian wells. 
The city has eight of these wells, flowing 
altogether 2,000,000 to 2,500,000 gallons 
every twenty-four hours, and five others 
besides ; and these, with six or eight deep 
wells sunk by private enterprise, and the 
cisterns filled by the rainfall, with which 
every household is supplied, furnish an 
abundance of the element for domestic 
and sanitary necessities, for the extinguish- 
ment of fires, and for manufacturing pur- 
poses. From wells alone four million 
five hundred thousand to five million 
gallons are obtained, and this quantity 



can be increased a third at least, by 
pumping. 

The city has provided a pumping sta- 
tion to facilitate the flow from its wells, a 
reservoir and stand pipe ; and thirty-three 
miles length of mains have been laid in 
the streets to distribute the water. The 
pumps have 6,000,000 to 7,000,000 gal- 
lons, and the storage tank i , 174,000 gallons 
capacity. The stand pipe is 152 feet high 
and will hold ^47,000 gallons. The works 
complete, cost $450,000, for which amount 
5 per cent 40 year bonds were issued. 
The water is drawn from "veins " — which 
from the volume they yield, might rather 
be called rivers — situated from 795 feet 
least, to 1,346 greatest depth underground, 
and it is exceedingly wholesome and 
clear. 

GOVERNMENT, TAXES AND DEBT. 

Galveston presents the outward sem- 
blance at least, of an orderly and well 
governed city. While it has always a 
large floating population of seafarers, and 
a very gregarious element in its twelve 
and a half per cent of negroes, a police 
force of forty men suffices for the protec- 
tion of property and life. The lesson 
that ^•ice thrives in darkness, has been 
mastered bv the authorities ; and the 
streets are lighted throughout by the city's 
own electric plant. R. A. Fulton, Mayor 
at present, is authority for many of the 
statements made herein. 

The corporate limits embrace an area 
of six and a half square miles. There 
are 128 miles of streets and 17 of alleys, 
and two and a quarter miles front of 
wharves to be patrolled and maintained. 
Three and a half miles of the business 
streets are paved with wooden blocks, 
and four miles with shell. Where neces- 
sary the grades have been raised, and fill- 
ing is in progress to improve the drainage 
of the streets. A system of water and 
sewer mains combined, has been proposed, 
but the work has not vet been commenced. 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



19 



The annual expense of the principal 
branches of the public service is, approx- 
imately, as follows : General salaries 
$30,000, police department $32,000, fire 
department $45,000, street lights $30,000, 
street improvements and other public 
work $32,000, public health and hospital 
$23,000, schools, city's share, $40,500, 
interest and sinking fund $100,000. 

Taxes were levied to provide for these 
disbursements during the fiscal year 18S8- 
89, at the rate of $1.70 on the hundred 
dollars, against property valuations of 
$20,314,334, which is about two-thirds 
only, of the real value of the property 
.assessed, personalty excepted. This 
assessment was seggregated as follows : 
Lands $9,506,019, improvements thereon, 
$6,188,676; personal property (about a 
tenth of actual values) $4,619,639. Of 
the $1.70 tax rate, 20 cents went for the 
schools. The revenue derived by taxes, 
$345,000, was, however, scarcely a third 
of the city's receipts. The tax funds 
were augmented by licenses, market rents, 
dividends from wharf property, etc. , so 
that the total revenues of the year, were 
$903,000. The disbursements were $722,- 
000. The total tax rate, city, county and 
State, for all purposes is $2.57^. 

The bonded debt of the city, largely a 
legacy of the corrupt and disorderly era 
of Reconstruction, is $1,500,000. It is 
funded so as to be in gradual process of 
extinction. Assets of the city, consisting 
of taxes due, wharf and railroad stock, 
public property, like market, school and 
engine houses, the city hall, hospital, etc., 
more than offset it. The hospital is 
valued at $35,000; the city hall and 
market house, $80,000, and an additional 
market $10,000; five public squares and 
a pai-k site, $133,000. 

The fire department has apparatus worth 
$46,500; its buildings ai'e valued at $18,- 
500. It has been a paid department five 
years. There are 51 men enrolled in the 
corps. It has five steamers, one Hayes 



truck, six hose carts equipped with 7,000 
feet of hose, and twenty horses. The 
various houses make five stations for the 
command. The water supply is now con- 
sidered ample for any exigency. There 
are 350 double hydrants attached to the 
thirty-three miles of water mains of the 
new works, and the old street cisterns are 
still serviceable. In case of fire among 
the shipping, the lighters in the harbor 
act as auxiliaries to the department. The 
efficiency of this arm of the body politic 
is illustrated in the fact that the loss last 
year, upon property valued at $400,000, 
was but $7,000. 

PLACES OF RESORT STREET RAILROADS. 

While some of the public squares have 
been dressed in floral garb, little attention 
has yet been given to the matter of a 
public park. The beach, however, which 
is a thoroughfare and resort for all the 
people of the city, rich and poor, high 
and low alike, supplies in large measure 
this w^ant of general recreation grounds. 
In the outskirts, too, are Woollam's Lake 
and the Fair Grounds, and a number of 
gardens to which the denizens of Gal- 
veston betake themselves for relaxation, 
among them that of the Garten Verein, 
a social organization of the wealthier resi- 
dents which has reclaimed an enclosure of 
several acres from the waste of sand. It 
is not a garden of flaunting blossoms in 
brick-bordered, mathematical beds, but a 
lovely place of floral parterres, and 
shrubbery, and velvet sward, of rustic 
arbor and shady nook, with a club house 
and pavilion where the members and 
their families find respite from the dust 
and heat and turmoil of the heart of the 
city. 

The Pagoda Baths, situated on the 
beach, facing the Beach Hotel, take this 
name from their architectural style. They 
cost the company that constructed them 
$12,000. They afford facilities for 600 



20 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



persons to bathe in the surf an hour, and 
unlimited room for sight-seers besides. 

The general plan of these baths is that 
of a grand promenade leading from the 
beach to a hundred-foot pier, flanked on 
either side by octagonal structures that 
have lono- wings extending out from them 



furnished with the artesian water of Gal- 
veston, and no extra charge is made for 
the use of these accessories. The prom- 
enade is 30 feet wide and is furnished 
with seats. 

This bath house replaces one built some 
vears ago, which was insufficient to accom- 




■RUEHEART, REAL ESTATE AGENT. 



over the waves. The entire building 
rests upon piling about 15 feet high, and 
the water is reached by a broad stairway 
descending from the center. The pago- 
das are So feet broad, and the wings are 
5S by 150. In these latter are 120 
single and 94 family dressing rooms. 
Shower baths are provided, which are 



modate the summer visitors to the beach. 
It is said to be the most commodious, and 
is certainly one of the handsomest estab- 
lishments of the kind in the country. Ar- 
rangements have been made for the safety 
of those who divert themselves in the 
breakers, and for the comfort and enter- 
tainment of their companions as well. 



THE CITT OF GALVESTON. 



21 



These baths are owned by a stock 
company of prominent residents. F. M. 
Spencer, Col. Walter Gresham, C. D. 



city, and furnish transit facilities to all 
these places of resort for a five-cent fare. 
The lines of Galveston are all owned and 
operated by a single corporation, the 
Galveston City Railroad Company, which 
has $937,000 invested in its venture. 
The Beach Hotel was built and is owned 
it. This companv is about to substi- 




VIEWS OF GALVESTON. 



Holmes, George Murdock and J. H. 
Atchison are its directors ; F. M. Spencer 
is president, J. H. Atchison, secretary 
and Geo. Murdock, manager. 

Street railroads, passing through the 
principal streets, ramify all quarters of the 



tute the over-head electric system for 
horses as motive powder. And this step 
Is but one of many examples of re- 
awakened enterprise since Galveston has 
been wedded in interest with the Great 
West. 



22 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



SCHOOLS, PLBLIC AND PRIVATE. 

On Avenue H, Galveston, there is an 
imposing edifice, crowned with a sort of 
cupola or dome. It derives from its 
great length, almost the full measure of 
the block on which it stands, a certain air 
of architectural dignity, and its spacious 
inner corridors and halls, produce a cor- 
responding effect. Graven upon the 
stuccoed front of this building are the 
words: Ball High School; and in 
one of its chambers has been set up, by 
the school children of the city, a marble 
bust of its founder, the late George Ball, 
of Ball, Hutchings & Co., bankers, who 
supervised, as well as paid for its con- 
struction, and presented it, ground 
included, a gift unconditional, to the city 
in which his fortune had been acquired. 

In another district of the city, on 
Eleventh street, between Avenues G and 
H, is a building scarcely less striking with- 
out and as thoroughly appointed within. 
This also is a school and a gift to the city, 
the gift likewise of a banker. Henry 
Rosenberg, who, as Ball, his exemplar 
did, has raised, while still in the flesh, 
the most enduring memento of his life. 
This school cost the donor $79,000 ; the 
Ball school is valued, wjth its site, at 
$90,000 ; and at K and Twentieth streets 
is another, built with the public funds, 
that cost $35,000. The eight public 
schools of the city with their furniture and 
fixtures and grounds, are scheduled at 
$300,803. 

Donative or tax-built, tliese schools of 
Galveston, all things considered quite 
equal to those of which the Hub of New 
World culture boasts, are an embodiment 
of the sentiment of the community with 
respect to education. A sentiment 
grounded in its public policy, by the 
very founders of the commonwealth, 
whose munificent provision of revenue 
and lands for the support of its schools, 
$100,000,000 in the aggregate, justifies 



all the encomium this wisest of state 
measures evokes. 

Galveston forms, in the educational 
scheme of the State, an independent 
school district, entitled, however, to a 
per capita share of the State's appropria- 
tion for schools, which for the 8,780 
children of school age enumerated last 
year — of whom 4,780 were enrolled — 
amounted, to $44,000. The city con- 
tributed from her own levy of taxes 
$40,000 more, and during the year almost 
$100,000 altogether, was expended upon 
the public schools of Galveston. 

A board of trustees, an elective body, 
governs these schools, with the assistance 
of an executive officer or superintendent. 
This position is now held by Jacob Bick- 
ler, an experienced man. There are five 
schools for the white children of the city 
and three for the colored, who number a 
fourth of the enrollment. Black or white, 
equal facilities ai^e afforded to all. The 
teachers number 103. Their salaries 
range from $50 to $200 a month. The 
studies and methods of instruction differ 
little from those in vogue in other 
American cities. Drawing and vocal 
music are features of all the courses. 
Latin is taught the high school classes, 
English, only, in the others. There are no 
grades preparatory for college. The 
State provides normal and university 
instruction, and the Galveston system is 
the common school, pure and simple. 

Two things are worthy of remark in 
this connection : Galveston was one of 
seven American cities awarded the gold 
medal of the last Paris Exposition for the 
daily work of its schools ; and Galveston — 
as much because it is already something 
of an educational center, as for its 
cl-emencies of climate — is the meeting 
place of the Texas Summer Normal, an 
organization of the teachers of the State 
for mutual improvement. 

The Texas Medical College, a 
State institution located at Galveston, has 



24 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



professional direction of the new John 
»Sealy hospital, a benefaction vested in the 
city, and has other special advantages to 



of the faculty. His associates in the work 
of instruction are Drs. B. E. Hadra, 
Hamilton A. West, H. P. Cooke, Ed. 




URSLLI.NE CONVENl 



offer those who desue to perfect them- 
selves in the healing art. Its plan of 
instruction comprises lectures, quizzes, 
clinics, practical demonstrations and lab- 
oratory work. It has a graded curriculum, 
requiring attendance at three courses of 
lectures, and daily clinics, medical and 
surgical, are held in the hospital. Its lab- 
oratories of chemistry, physiology, anat- 
omy and pathology are especially well 
equipped. 

Among the members of the faculty of 
this college are specialists thoroughly 
competent to elucidate the theory and 
practice of those branches of the study of 
medicine known as pathology and bacte- 
riology ; diseases also of the eye, car and 
throat, of the skin and genito-urinary 
organs : and these are taught in the regu- 
lar coarse. Dr. J. F. Y. Paine is Dean 



Randall, jr., J. H. Wysong, George Dock, 
C. W. Trueheart, Geo. H. Lee, Geo. P. 
Hall, and Chas. C. Banell. 

The most notable of the private schools 
of Galveston- are those that follow: 

The Ursulixe Convext at Galveston, 
is an institution, which in its field, the 
education of voung ladies, is unexcelled. 
It has a healthful and pleasant situation 
on the blocks bounded by Avenues N 
and O, Twenty-lifth and Twenty-Seventh 
streets, about midway between the busi- 
ness district of the city and the beach. 
The illustration accompanying this mat- 
ter is an accurate representation of its 
ample frontage and substantial architec- 
ture, — indications of the commodious and 
comfortable appointments within, — but it 
gives no hint of the spacious and attract- 
ive back-ground of the j^icture — the exten- 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



25 



sive enclosures for recreation behind the 
buildings, the adjacent mansions and the 
gardens of the wealthy residents of the 
city, the broad driveway of the beach, the 
long lines of white-capped breakers thun- 
dering upon the shore and the glorious 
prospect of open sea beyond. It is a site 
that has special charms. And if, as has 
often been said, there are moral influences 
in a cheerful environment, then these sur- 
roundings of this institution, are not the 
least of its many advantages. 

But it was not entirely for its pictur- 
esque features, that a site was chosen by 
the founders of the academy, beside the 
Gulf. 'It is the benign office of this balm- 
iest of Summer seas, to mellow the cli- 
mate of all Eastern Texas; and Galves- 
ton, nearest its warm and heaving bosom, 
is its most favored beneficiary. It is true 
that the island is low ; but it would be 



of the Gulf blow daily over the Ursuline 
school, and that its record for healthful- 
ness is exceptionally high. 

This may be ascribed as much to the 
sanitary appointments of the academy 
and to the solicitude of the ladies in 
charge, as to the genial and even climate 
of the Oleander city. Particular atten- 
tion is paid to the food of boarding pupils, 
to the ventilation of their apartments, 
their exercises and relaxations. The 
methods of instruction and discipline 
employed by the Sisters, are substantially 
those of other first-class schools, but the 
system is elastic and discriminating, and it 
is not the purpose to cast all the pupils in 
the self-same mold. The aim is to shape 
the character as well as mind ; to cultivate 
orderlv habits and lady-like manners, as 
well as learning. And the hundreds of 
graduates of the school, who are the pride 




difHcult to recall, at any elevation, a more of the home circle and the ornaments of so- 
wholesome mean of atmospheric condi- ciety throughout the State, are some meas- 
tions. than the Gem of the Gulf enjoys. ure certainly of the success attained in these 
Certain it is, in any event, that the zephyrs particulars, by this order at Galveston. 



26 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



The courses of study embrace all the 
branches of a solid and refined educa- 
tion. The languages, drawing, painting, 
music, needlework, etc., are taught by 
nineteen ladies of the community and 
eleven household assistants, who are mem- 
bers also. Mother St. Agnes is Superior- 
ess. Tuition, including all the privileges 
of instruction and board, is $icx) for the 
session. A discount is made for less than 
the full course, or for two or more children 
of the same parents. Instruction is given 
to fifty yom^g ladies of the city who live 
at home. 

The institution is chartered and is 
empowered to confer degrees. It was 
founded in 1847 by a company of Sisters 
from New Orleans. And to those who 
were residents of the city, when it was 
alternately beleaguered by rival forces of 
the North and South, the old convent 
building, will be reminiscent, as long as 
it stands, of that historic and heroic past. 
It was in this convent, that, during the 
successive sieges of the city, the defence- 
less and dependent were sheltered. In it 
these daughters of St. Angela eased the 
last hours of those who fought, with equal 
valor, to maintain conflicting traditions. 
In it, reposed, as in a sanctuary, the dead 
of both invader and defender. And in it, 
only, of all this war-bound island, during 
those years of havoc, had white-robed 
Peace a lodgement. 

The Conyngton Business College 
is established in Houston as well as here, 
to provide the residents of both places, 
as well as of the State at large, educational 
facilities specially adapted for those who 
intend to engage in business pursuits. 
The system and methods of this institution 
have been perfected during the five years 
since its foundation, by the management 
of the Messrs. Conyngton, whose reputa- 
tion in educational matters is more than 
merely local. Both gentlemen are con- 
nected with the Texas Summer Normal, 
a permanent association of the teachers of 



the State for purposes of education, and 
both are likewise identified with the man- 
agement of the editorial corps of the Texas 
jfoiirnal of Education., the leading edu- 
cational magazine of the State. 

The faculty at Galveston comprises six 
experienced instructors and at Houston 
the same number. 

These teachers have been with them 
almost since the foundation of the school, 
and are experts in their several specialties. 
The studies of book-keeping, commercial 
law and business practice, including pen- 
manship, constitutes what is called the Busi- 
ness Course. Then there is a con^espond- 
ing course of instruction in short-hand and 
typewriting, including composition and 
such knowledge of English grammar as is 
necessary for practical business use. For 
those who desire to take these courses, 
and are not adequately prepared, they 
maintain a preparatory department where 
instruction is given in the ordinary English 
branches, having as its aim the preparation 
of its pupils to write and compose a first- 
class business letter and to be quick, sharp 
and accurate in all arithmetical calcula- 
tions. 

For the benefit of young men who are 
busy during the day, they run night schools 
also nearly the whole year round. These 
are well patronized in both cities. Their 
terms are reasonable considering the ad- 
vantages afforded. 

Another feature of the management of 
this institution is, that nearly every student 
competent to hold one, is provided with a 
situation, shortly after graduating. The 
fact is, business men complain that they can 
not get students enough to fill the posi- 
tions that are open to these graduates. 
The College will shortly move into new, 
enlarged and specially prepared quarters 
here. 

The indications are many that Galves- 
ton is destined to be a great capital of 
commerce. Numerous and weighty con- 
cerns combine to foster its growth. With 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



27 



its foreign shipping houses, its general in- 
surance agencies, its cable station for 
South American and ISIexican dispatches, 
and other special advantages, it leads 
all the Southwestern cities now. As 
such, it is headquarters for the Texas 
Phonograph Co., who have exclusive 
rights for all Texas to the patents of Edi- 
son, Painter and Bell, covering the differ- 
ent applications of "that marvel of mar- 
vels, the speaking inachine." 

Considered as a device merely, the pho- 
nograph is an extraordinary thing. Bvit 
it promises to have vastly greater import- 
ance in the civilization of the future, as 
an instrument furthering all the business 
of life, and is likely to hold a place cor- 
responding with that of the telegraph and 
telephone, and like conveniences. Inani- 
mate as it is, it is already the monitor and 
familiar of editors and authors ; for them 
the goddess Mnemosyne, mother of the 
muses, materialized. An entire novel has 
been committed to it, by word of mouth, 
for a recital later to a copyist, and the 
voice of England's Grand Old Man, and 
of the cantratice Patti, have been em- 
balmed in it to delectate unborn ages. 

The Texas Phonograph Company 
is a Galveston institution. The greater 
part of its stock is held by residents of the 
city, among them some of the foremost, 
financially here. It is capitalized to the 
amount of $500,000. H. Lee Sellers is 
its president; Hugh R. Conyngton, secre- 
tary, Thos. Conyngton, general manager. 
Associated with these gentlemen as di- 
rectors are John H. Atkinson, R. S. Wil- 
lis, and Edward Lasker of Galveston and 
Robt. Gibson of Dallas. The company 
has commodious and elegant quarters at the 
coiner of Tremont and Mechanic streets. 

press, drama and song. 

A HANDSOME presscd brick building, 
finished in terra cotta, and situated next 
to the Cotton Exchange, as one of the 



engravings in this chapter shows, is 
occupied by the Galveston A^ezvs, the 
leading daily of the city. This building 
cost $100,000 and the stock of the cor- 
poration proprietary, $300,000 worth of 
which has been issued, is quoted on 
'Change above par. The JVezvs was 
founded in 1S43, and was conducted, 
during the eventful period of the war, by 
the late Willard Richardson, a man of 
mark in Southwestern journalism. It has 
been eminently successful also under the 
management of Col. A. H. Belo and 
associates, who are the owners besides of 
the Dallas JVervs^an organ second only in 
Texas to it, in merit and influence. As 
an enterprise therefore, it is more than 
merely a reflection of forty-eight years of 
the life of the city. It is a gauge as well 
of its progress and prosperity during that 
time. 

The Trilniiic, published by J. W. 
Burson, is the only evening issue. The 
Texas Post., a weekly, has for its constit- 
uency the German residents of the city 
and its vicinity. The sects and the trades, 
educational and other interests, also have 
representatives in the press of the city. 
The yournal of Cojunierce., devoted to 
the industrial and commercial concerns 
of Texas, is the official paper of the Stafe 
Association of Architects. It has 5,000 
circulation. A stock company, of which 
E. F. Redfield of the Redfield Company, 
dealers in building material at 171 
Mechanic street, is president, and J. E. 
Gallaher, manager, publishes it. 

A very general interest in current lit- 
erature is evinced by the patronage 
accorded the bookstores of the city. The 
municipality contributes $1,500 a year to 
sustain the free circulating library of the 
Galveston Lyceum, and the public has 
access also, through members, to the col- 
lections of books of the secret orders. 

The drama is supported at Galveston 
in a discriminating as well as liberal 
spirit that draws the best talent of the 



28 



THE CITY OF GALVESTOX. 



stage to the city. Galveston enjoys dis- 
tinction among Texas cities as the only 
one in which the incomparable Patti has 
sung. Music has votaries in every house- 
hold, and choral societies of both German 
and American membership flourish. It 
is somewhat an indication of the attention 
given to the refinements of life, that one 
of the largest music houses of the South 
has been established and upbuilt here, 
that of Thomas Goggan & Bro., described 
in another part of this work. 

Galveston is by no means an art center. 
But there are meliorating influences in 
the accumulations of wealth in the city, 
wherein taste and elegance oi-iginate, and 
whereby only, native production is likely 
to be fostered A single example of 
commemorative sculpture there is in one 
of the cemeteries of the city. The 
memorial of a merchant, Moritz Kopferl. 
first president of the Gulf, Colorado <!v: 
Santa Fe Railroad. A life size group of 
matron and children, expressing mutely, 
but eloquently, in the marble of Carrara, 
and the fine Roman bronze relievo be- 
neath them, the bereavement of his relict. 
Beside which costly tribute to a simple 
citizen of Galveston, the dust of Menard, 
its founder, of Magruder, its defender, 
and of Wigfall, its senator, lie all unhon- 
ored. A contrast which, however, it must 
be admitted, might be drawn as well for 
many a larger and richer place. 

That greatest of all artists, the sun, 
beaming steadilv, throughout the seasons, 
in an almost unclouded sky, lends his aid 
to further and perfect the work of the 
Galveston photographer. The profession 
is favored likewise by the liberal patron- 
age bestowed by wealthy and fashionable 
residents. .Superior work, especial! v in 
portraiture, is, accordingly, done in the 
city — the best, perhaps, by Jusrrs Zahn, 
whose gallery and studio is at 418 Tremont 
street. Mr. Zahn's acquirements, gained 
in his early life in Germanv, have been 
rounded out bv experiences in several of 



the large cities of this country, and he has 
made himself proficient in all the branches 
of his business. Many of the engravings 
in this work were made from views taken 
by him, the artistic spirit of which it has 
been scarcely possible to reproduce in the 
hard metallic medium of electro plates. 
Mr. Zahn is successor to P. H. Rose, who 
had reputation before him as a skillful 
photographer. 

SOCIETY AND PEOPLE. 

Gal\'estox is a minor type of the 
cosmopolitan city, and is as liberal in its 
pursuit of diversions as the Athens of the 
Apostolic era with respect to stranger 
Gods. The celebration of a Mai f est or 
a Fall of the Bastile, has participants of 
every nationality. Its resorts are en- 
livened by the presence of the large 
floating population attracted by its pros- 
perity, measurably so by the non-resi- 
dent attaches of the foreign houses busily 
engaged, for more than half the vear, in 
the cotton trade. 

As a seaport and summer resort it is 
tolerant of gambling and social vices. 
These proceed retiringly behind closed 
doors. Sunday law is not strictly en- 
forced. The proprieties of life are, 
nevertheless, very generally observed. 

Galveston has several associations de- 
voted to physical culture and athletic 
sport, among these the Turn I'erriu. and 
a base ball club. For the national game 
finds favor with the populace just as else- 
where in the land. It has no driving club, 
but it has many reinsmen and horse fan- 
ciers, by whom the beach and the Fair 
grounds are used as a speeding track. It 
has several militia commands also, cul- 
tivating zealouslv. as everywhere in the 
South, a knightly spirit, as well as a thirst 
for distinction in arms. But the pride 
of the residents is the Island City Boating 
and Athletic Club, which has achieved 
first honors at manv of the regattas in 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



29 



Southern waters, and of which, many of 
the merchants of the city are honorary 
members. It has a fine club house on one 
of the wharves, and a full complement of 
racing and pleasure craft. 

The Union Club is an association of the 
business men for social relaxation. Gal-' 
veston has a liberal sprinkling of German 
citizens and of whites from the adjacent 
Creole State. But the predominating 
element of the population is American ; 
if not to the manor born, thoroughly 
Americanized ; and from it the best 
society of the city takes its tone. It is a 
conservative society, this of Galveston, 
holding fast to many of the social tra- 
ditions and conventionalities of the ancien 
regime. And but little infected with 
fashionable follies. A society of intelli- 
gence, refinement and true gentility, 
basing its distinctions less upon wealth 
than on moral worth. 

A society rfecognizing its duty to its 
dependents of the enfranchised race. 
Not unmindful of its obligations with 
respect to religion and the humanities. 
Having along with many high-minded 
and honorable, its share of generous and 
public-spirited men. To one of whom, 
the late John Sealy, of Ball, Hutchings & 
Co., bankers, the State is indebted for .a 
noble foundation, the hospital building 
which bears his name. This institution 
is leased to the city, by which it is main- 
tained as a public charge. 

St. Mary's Infirmary, one of the 
largest and finest institutions for the res- 
toration of invalids in the Southwest, is 
located at Eighth and Market streets, a 
delightful situation, away from the noise 
and bustle of the business precincts of the 
city. It is a spacious structure, manifest- 
ing externally the comfort that reigns 
within It, has ample grounds, and the 
most attractive environment of the resi- 
dence quarter ; and it is visited daily by 
the refreshing and wholesome Gulf breeze, 
itself a tonic for bodily ailments, and a 



healing balm for the dispirited and dis- 
tressed. 

St. Mary's is conducted by the vSisters 
of Charity of the Incarnate Word, who 
conduct also St. Joseph's Infirmary at 
Houston, and whose reputation has been 
established by the perfect system and order 
of their management, as well as by their 
tender ministrations and heroic devotion 
to duty, here and everywhere, in seasons 
of pestilence and calamity. Mother Au- 
gustine, one of the most experienced ladies 
of the order, is its Superioress. The medi- 
cal staff is directed by Dr. C. H. Wilkin- 
son, who is also surgeon in chief, and Dr. 
M. Singer is house surgeon. 

Over 17,000 patients have been treated 
at St. Mary's since its establishment in 
1866. It has special facilities for those 
who desire personal attention and private 
conveniences, and for patients of both 
sexes from the interior, to many of whom, 
it is commended by the country physi- 
cians. It has the character of a quiet and 
retired home rather than of a public insti- 
tution ; of a home providing the careful 
nui'sing, the appetizing fare and the indi- 
vidual consideration, that many, indeed 
most of the sick, require. 

LIVING AND HOTELS. 

Galveston rivals New Orleans in the 
profusion, variety and cheapness of its 
market products. It has its restaurateurs 
too, like that Epicurean city, specially de- 
voted to the gratification of the palates of 
the local bon vivants. The Gulf is the 
natural home of the pompano, the red-fish, 
the Spanish mackerel and the oyster, and 
the packing of these denizens of the warm 
salt waters for shipment to inland cities, is 
an expanding industry of the city. The 
prolific gaixiens and orchards of the con- 
tiguous mainland, produce abundantly, 
besides the fruits of the temperate zone, 
the fig, the banana, and the orange ; and 
along with these are disjDlayed in the stalls, 



30 



THE cm 

unknown in 



OF GALVESTON. 



many comestibles entirel} 
colder climates. 

Favored with such facilities for a supe- 
rior cuisine, the hotels of the city can be 
charged with neither a doubtful nor a fru- 
gal hospitality. Of those open the yeai 



round, the Girardix and Tremoxt are 
the best. The Beach, situated directly 
upon the Gulf shore, is the favorite resort 
of the summer visitors. These three 
houses have accommodations, between 
them, for over a thousand guests. 









NEW FEDERAL BUILDING, GALVESTON. 
TO BE USED FOR CUSTOM HOUSE, UNITED STATES COURTS AND POST OFFICE. 



GALVESTON AS A RAILROAD CENTER. 




ALVESTON is the Gulf 
terminal for all three of 
the powerful and com- 
prehensive railroad sys- 
tems of the Southwest, 
Gould's Missouri Pacific 
lines, the Santa Fe lines and those of 
the Southern Pacific system. It is the 
seaboard station for most of the Texas 
traffic of these lines, New Orleans only 
competing in this particular with it ; and 
it is the tidewater outlet besides, for very 
much of their business originating outside 
the State. The Union Pacific and Rock 
Island systems, steadily advancing their 
outposts southeastward, the former by its 
lately acquired " Panhandle " line from 
Denver to Fort Worth and the latter 
south-bound from Kingfisher, Kan., to 
Fort Worth and San Antonio, are likely 
also to make it their sea-side destination, 
and other roads are projected toward it. 

The three systems that already afford it 
transportation advantages, have an aggre- 
gate length of 25,000 miles of track. 
They interchain Southwestern communi- 
ties having 12,000,000 of population m 
the aggregate, for whom, one and all, 
Galveston is the gateway to the sea. 
They are the arterial system of the com- 
merce of all that vast region, west of the 
Mississippi and lying between the twenty- 
ninth parallel of latitude, approximately^ 
that of Galveston and Guaymas, Mexico, 
and the thirty-ninth, very nearly that of 
Kansas City, Denver and San Francisco, 
a region almost if not quite equal in area 
to a third of the Union, and, prospect- 
ively, its richest parts. 

This is the territory inland, tributary in 
the commercial sense to Galveston. The 
State of Texas has, according to the 



comptroller's report for 1890, 8.468 miles 
of track herself, all which is available for 
the trade of Galveston, either directly, 
by the three roads described in this chap- 
ter, or indirectly, by their branches and 
auxiliaries. 

The International and Great 
Northern Railroad, familiarly known 
as the International Route, because it is a 
trunk line, through Texas, to the Repub- 
lic of Mexico, is, with its branches, 825 
miles long, and is a component of the 
great Gould Southwestern system. It 
extends from Longview in Northeastern 
Texas, 496 miles southwesterly to La- 
redo on the Rio Grande, through Overton, 
Troupe, Jacksonville, Palestine, Hearne, 
Milano Junction, Rockdale, Taylor, 
Round Rock, Austin, the State Capital ; 
San Marcos, New Braunfels and San An- 
tonio ; and from Palestine, in mid-Eastern 
Texas to Galveston 200 miles south, 
through Crockett, Trinity, Willis and 
Houston. It has branches from Overton 
to Henderson, Mineola, through Tyler to 
Troupe, Round Rock to Galveston, 
Phelps to Huntsville and Houston to 
Columbia. By its connection with the 
Texas & Pacific Railway, from Longview 
to Texarkana, and thus with the St. Louis, 
Iron Mountain & Southern Railway, or 
Iron Mountain Route, the International 
forms the shortest line between Galveston, 
Houston and St. Louis. Pullman Buffet 
Sleeping Cars, making the trijD eleven 
houi-s fifteen minutes quicker than any 
other route, ply between these points. A 
line of Pullman Buffet Sleepers is also 
in daily operation between Laredo, San 
Antonio, Austin and vSt. Louis, Mo., 
proceeding north without change, via 
Texarkana and the "Iron Mountain 



32 



THE CITY OF GALVESTOX. 



Route," and vice versa, making the trip 
eleven hours quicker than by any other 
route. Pullman Buffet Sleeping Cars are 
also run daily between San Antonio and 
Kansas City, without change. 

At Laredo, direct connection is made 
with the Mexican Xiitional Railroad, 
which has Pullman Buffet Sleeping Cars 
to and from the City of Mexico. Thus 
practically, an unbroken sleeping car line 
is provided between St. Louis and the 
City of Mexico. Accommodations through 
can be secured at either point, and the 
change at Laredo occurs in a Union Depot 
and at seasonable hours. 

Between St. Louis and the City of 
Mexico, this route is 363 miles the short- 
est and 17 hours 15 minutes the quickest, 
both ways. Between Galveston and the 
City of Mexico, this route (via Austin 
and Laredo) is seven hours quicker than 
anv other route. The grand old Sierra 
Madre Range of mountains is in full view 
from the car windows the greater part of 
the route ; the scenery indeed along the 
line of the Mexican National, is conceded 
the most picturesque in Mexico. 

With these advantages, the Interna- 
tional & Great Northern Railroad is 
unquestionably, the Trunk Line to and 
from Mexico ; also between the cities in 
South and Southwest Texas and St. 
Louis, Chicago, New York and the East. 
That fact is attested by its business, which 
is continuously increasing and requiring 
large additions to its already extensive 
equipment. Although it is as thoroughly 
appointed, in all of its departments as 
any road in the land, and is providing 
excellent service to both traveling and 
shipping patrons, its policy is progressive 
and it is steadily anticipating its require- 
ments, by placing orders for new locomo- 
tives, cars and passenger coaches. 

It will be observed by reference to the 
sketch of the route of the International in 
the preceding paragraphs, that Austin, 
San Antonio, Laredo, Houston, Gal- 



veston, and other of the largest and most 
flourishing towns in Texas, are directly 
upon it. LoN-GViEw, its northern termi- 
nus, is a place of 3,000 population, with 
quite a large trade. It is the county seat 
of Gregg county, which has a soil speci- 
ally adapted to the growth of fruits, and 
it is 3S2 miles from Galveston. Busy and 
thriving places, too, are Overton and 
Henderson in Rusk county, which had 
standing, according to the last census 
reports, 2,816,000 feet, board measure, of 
merchantable pine, and which has exhib- 
ited the superior products of its orchards 
at fairs in other States. Mixeola, 
northern terminus of the Mineola branch 
of the I. & G. N., is 290 miles from Gal- 
veston. It has 2,500 people and is the 
largest town in Wood county, a country 
of many streams and water powers 
Mineola ships 25.000 bales of cotton a 
year. 

Tyler, in Smith county, 265 miles 
from Galveston, is a bustling com- 
munity of 10,500 people. It has 
noteworthy manufactures, among them 
four fruit packeries — significant of the 
attention given to fruit culture in the 
country adjacent— it ships strawberries to 
both Denver and Kansas City, and it 
sends to the greater markets of the land 
some 21,000 bales of cotton a year. It 
has the electric light and an opera house, 
and is the county seat ; and is further 
distinguished as the place where three 
superior tribunals hold regular sessions, 
the State Court of Appeals, the Supreme 
Court of Texas and the United States 
District Court. Palestine, Anderson 
county, 200 miles from Galveston, is a 
place of S,ooo population, and of im- 
portant and diversified industries. It has 
a large and powerful cotton compress, a 
mammoth cotton seed oil mill, a big 
foundry and machine shops and the 
general oflices and shops of the I. & G. 
N. road. It has its ice factorv, electric 
light plant and a supply of most excellent 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



33 



water adequate for the demands of future 
growth. The prolific soil of the adjacent 
country, producing besides fruits, early 
vegetables and cotton, a great variety of 
the staples of Texas, contributes, with its 
manufacturing enterprise, to give prestige 
and prosperity to Palestine. Its ship- 
ments of cotton during the season 
aggregate nine or ten thousand bales. 

Taylor is in Williamson county, 
where the I. & G. N. crosses the M,, K. 
& T., has a cotton trade of 15,000 bales, 
branch railroad shops and a population of 
4,000, which it confidently expects will 
be doubled within the next two years. 
Georgetown, also in Williamson county, 
355 miles from Galveston, has 3,500 
people, 15,000 bales shipments and five 
or six hundred thousand dollars of busi- 
ness a year. It is notable also for its 
Methodist University, its Chautauqua 
Assembly grounds and its mineral springs. 
Williamson county, it may be remarked 
parenthetically, exhibited at the Atlanta 
International Cotton Exposition of iSSr, 
a fleece that weighed 40 pounds. The 
animal from which it was taken yielded 
25 pounds a year for five years. The 
county, in fact, is famous for its flocks 
throughout the State. 

Austin, the capital of Texas, is situ- 
ated upon an eminence rising from the 
Colorado River, in Travis county, and 
commanding, from Capitol Hill and 
other positions within the city, an ex- 
tended and pleasing prospect. The 
general elevation, about 650 feet above 
sea level, unfolds a panorama of rugged 
mountains and undulating prairie and 
broad and fertile valleys, of winding 
river, primeval woodland, verdant fields 
and fallowed lands, hardly surpassed in 
the land ; and the city itself has elements 
of the picturesque in keeping with its 
environment. It is considered one of the 
most attractive cities of the State, and is 
of note also for its salubrious climate, 
substantial business architecture, tasteful 



homes and social refinement. The new 
State capitol, the most imposing pile 
west of the Mississippi, and but little if 
any inferior to the New York capitol at 
Albany, is located at Austin. It is 
modelled after the capitol at Washington, 
and is a structure becoming the rank and 
pride of the State. Austin is a jobbing 
center of considerable importance. Its 
yearly cotton shipments are 25,000 bales. 
The current and course of the Colorado 
at Austin is particularly favorable for 
the development of manufacturing pow- 
ers, a work which has lately been under- 
taken in the public interest by the 
municipality itself. 

San Marcos, Hays county, and New 
Braunfels, Comal county, are places 
of about 3,000 population each, shipping 
about 15,000 bales apiece and both lying 
upon streams affording water powers, 
which are utilized to run saw and grist 
mills and other industrial establishments. 
San Marcos is famous for its scenic sur- 
roundings. The San Marcos river takes 
its rise here, in a spring bursting from the 
base of the mountains near the town. 
New Braunfels was settled years ago by a 
thrifty class of Germans. The Comal 
river at this place, would, it is believed, 
furnish moi'e power by far than is now 
utilized. 

San Antonio, the Alamo city, is situ- 
ated, by the course of the I. & G. N, road, 
but 154 miles from the Mexican border. 
Its geographical position and railway con- 
nections, establish it as the gate city and 
entrepot of Mexican trade. It has 60,000 
population, and with the rapid settlement 
of its tributary territory in Southern and 
Southwestern Texas, is growing fast. It 
has a military post disbursing $1,500,000 
of government money, the Mexican con- 
sulate for the entire frontier, has a wool 
trade of 7,100,000 pounds, which is about 
a third of the product of Texas, and im- 
portant banking and jobbing concerns. 
Its charming environment and its memo- 



34 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



rials of an eventful and historic past, and 
more than all else perhaps, in its later 
stages of growth, the balm of its climate, 
which is particularly efficacious in restora- 
tion of the consumptive and debilitated, 
are attracting many from the older .States. 
San Antonio's advantages are exhaust- 
ively treated in a special edition of the 
Engelhardt Series, now in press. 

Laredo, southwestern terminus of the 
I. & G. N. R. R., is situated on the Rio 
Grande river, the border line between 
Texas and Mexico, about 600 feet above 
sea level and in an exceedingly healthy 
locality. It has 15,000 people and is the 
county seat of Webb. Its position makes 
it the portal for commerce between the 
United States and the Republic of Mexico, 
and it is fast becoming the commercial 
and manufacturing center for Southwest 
Texas and Northern Mexico. The im- 
ports and exports for 1890, estimated by 
the monthly increase over last year, will 
amount to $20,000,000. It has the largest 
car and machine shops west of the Missis- 
sippi river, a large cotton gin and milling 
works and a number of flourishing manu- 
factories. The attention of manufacturers 
throughout the United States is being at- 
tracted to Laredo by the unlimited quan- 
tity of cheap coal mined there, the 
abundant raw matei-ial, ample water sup- 
ply, splendid climate and the extensive 
and growing markets in Southwest Texas 
and Mexico. Besides its water works 
Laredo has an electric light plant and also 
an electric motor street railway. During 
the past year fifteen modern stores and 250 
residences have been constructed. What 
has been built on the heights, a beautiful 
chain of hills east of the city, which are 
connected with the business portion bv the 
electric motor street railway, makes quite 
a city of itself. That Laredo is destined 
to become one of the leading trade centers 
of the great Southwest, is admitted by all 
who have given her advantages even a 
cursory examination. The soil of the 



country adjacent produces from three- 
quarters to a bale an acre, and the tenderer 
sub-tropical fruits may be grown without 
protection. 

Elkhart, Anderson countv, has re- 
cently attained a measure of prominence 
by the discovery there of copious mineral 
springs. A hotel has been built there to 
make it a resort. Crockett, Houston 
county, 164 miles from Galveston, ships 
10,000 bales of cotton a year. This 
county had 3,216,000,000 feet of loblolly 
pine in it at last reports. Trinity, 136 
miles from Galveston, is the principal 
railway station of the county of the same 
name, which is also heavily timbered. 
HiXTSViLLE, Walker county, has the 
Sam Houston Normal school, a State 
institution, and the principal penitentiary 
of the State (with its cotton mill, shoe 
factory, saddlery and other manufacturing 
departments) to enliven its business. 
Willis, Montgomery county, is 97 miles 
from Galveston and is the end of two 
freight divisions of the I. & G. X. 

Houston, on Buffalo Bayou, a naviga- 
ble stream that empties into Galveston 
Bay, is 50 miles from Galveston. Its 
population is 40 000. It is the county 
seat of Harris, and besides being one of the 
great railway centers of the State, presents 
the peculiar conditions of an inland city, 
having also the advantages of a seaport. 
Houston's commercial, manufacturing, 
educational and social advantages entitle 
the city to rank with the most progressive 
and attractive places of the Southwest. 
The manufacturing interests of the city 
are large and are increasing both in 
variety and importance. Its industrial 
enterprise has representation in cotton 
seed oil mills, flouring and grist mills, 
plow factories, four large brass and iron 
foundries, three cooperage establishments, 
car wheel works, extensive brick manufac- 
tories and other lesser ventures. Around 
and near the city of Houston, market 
gardening is an important and profitable 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



35 



industry. Much attention has been given 
to the cultivation of strawberries, grapes 
and fruits of all kinds. 

The International, by the State 
Comptroller's report, represents an invest- 
ment of $37,945,714. Its total business 
last year aggregated, $3,228,840. The 
passengers carried numbered 463,161 ; the 
freight hauled 795,033 tons, as follows: 
lumber, 190,000 tons ; manufactures and 
merchandise, 155,957; coal, 96.S33 ; mis- 
cellaneous, 73,854; live stock, 62,607: 
cotton 57,820; grain and flour, 53,476 ; 
other agricultural products, 43,115 ; lead 
ore, 15,128. Ithas 1,345 cars, coaches and 
locomotives and 2,532 employes. 

The Houston & Texas Central 
Railroad, originated before the war and 
was to have made this city its southern 
terminus and starting point then, but, 
owing to the indifference of the commu- 
nity toward it at that time, construction 
was begun instead, at Houston. In Texas, 
as elsewhere in the South, the conflict of 
arms, stayed all railroad projects, but in 
1867, when business was generally 
renewed, a new era of railroad building 
opened, and work was resumed on this 
line, and in a few years it had proceeded 
rapidly northward until Denison at the 
State line was attained, a distance of 338 
miles. In its progress northward, Hemp- 
stead, Navasota, Hearne, Bremond, 
Groesbeck, Corsicana, Dallas, McKinney 
and Sherman, the most prosperous and 
populous place in Eastern Texas, were 
successively reached. 

An entrance to Galveston was after- 
ward effected over the old Galveston, 
Houston & Henderson's right of way, 
and branches have been built out from the 
main stem of the road as follows : Hemp- 
stead, west to Austin, one hundred and 
fifteen miles; Bremond, northwest to Al- 
bany (intended to be continued through 
the "Panhandle" of Texas to New 
Mexico and Colorado), two hundred and 
thirty-two miles ; Garrett, northeast to 



Roberts, fifty-two miles ; and Garrett via 
Waxahatchie, northwest to Fort Worth, 
fifty-three miles. 

By its termination at Denison, the 
Houston & Texas Central has connection 
with the Missouri, Kansas & Texas road 
of the Gould System, north-bound 
through Indian Territory, Kansas and 
Missouri to Kansas City and St. Louis. 
Its other connections are numerous, chief 
of them these: At Galveston, with 
the Morgan line of steamers for New 
York ; at Houston with the East & 
West Texas narrow gauge and the South- 
ern Pacific, (with which latter as a road 
of its own system, it has close alli- 
ance) ; Fort Worth and Dallas, with the 
Texas & Pacific west-bound for El Paso 
and east-bound for New Orleans ; at Fort 
Worth also with the new Denver & Fort 
Worth road recently absorbed by the 
Union Pacific, and having Denver at its 
other extremity, and with the Fort Worth 
& Rio Grande road for Grandbury and 
Stephensville ; at Corsicana and Waco 
with the St. Louis, Arkansas & Texas, 
which effects a junction with the Iron 
Mountain road at Texarkana, and itself 
proceeds on to Cairo, 111. At Heai'ne 
and Austin the Houston & Texas Central 
is crossed by the International & Great 
Northern of the Gould System, and at 
Navasota, Brenham and Morgan by the 
Gulf. Colorado & "Santa Fe " South- 
western and transcontinental system. 

The many small but growing feedei's 
of the trade of Galveston that are on this 
route, make it of great advantage to the 
city. It traverses twenty-seven counties 
of Eastern Texas, the most populous and 
afiiuent of the State. While it is closely 
related to the Southern Pacific road, it is 
particularly, as to its management, policy 
and situation, a Texas road, and although, 
owing to financial complications, not par- 
ticularly pertinent to this description, it is 
in the hands of a receiver, it is notable 
among Southwestern roads for its fine 



36 



THE riTY OF GALVESTOX. 



equipinent and thorough condition. It is 
furthering immigration to the State by 
special arrangements with all the foreign 
steamship lines, and by sale of sixty day 
excursion tickets throughout the North 
and West ; and it is spreading, by liberal 
expenditure, for printed matter, all the 
information that might be serviceable, 
concerning lands along its route, busi- 
ness opportunities, and the characteristics 
of the State that now affords the most 
inviting of all American fields for colo- 
nization and enterprise. 

The report of the State Comptroller of 
Texas recently issued, gives the total 
length of this road as 579 miles. Its cost 
by the same authority was $27 679,90:5, 
its earnings in 1SS9, $3,264,362, its oper- 
ating expenses, $2,409,923. It owns 
2,009 cars, and employs 1,937 persons. 
The principal items of its freight traffic 
during the year were, lumber 121,660 
tons, cotton 80,877 tons, cotton seed 
35,744 tons, grain, flour and mill products 
24.606 tons live stock 23.754 tons, agri- 
cultural products 16,390 tons, coal 35,- 
710 tons, manufactured goods and general 
merchandise 376,935 tons. Its total 
freight traffic was 565,207 tons. 

A. C. Hutchinson, general manager of 
the Southern Pacific system at New 
Orleans, is president of the Houston & 
Texas Central road ; Chas. Dillingham, 
Houston, vice-president and receiver; A. 
Faulkner. Houston, general passenger 
and ticket agent. 

The Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe 
Railroad is a Galveston enterprise ; an 
instance of quiet but intensive spirit on 
the part of representative men of the city, 
and a complete rejoinder to all criticisms 
upon the progressiveness of the com- 
munity. It originated with capitalists 
here, was prosecuted to completion as a 
trunk line extending entirely through the 
vState by them, and although it has been 
attached to the great Southwestern system 
of .Santa Fe lines, several of these parties 



still retain their interests in it. and one of 
them is its vice-president ; so that title js 
regularly established to it as a Galveston 
creation and a Galveston project. 

The first fifty miles of the road were 
built with the assistance of a $200,000 
subsidy, voted by the county of Galveston. 
Financial complications stopped further 
procedure then and for three years after. 
In 1S7S the road was sold under fore- 
closure. It was bought by the real 
promoters of the venture — those who had 
funds to make a start in earnest — John 
and George Sealy, .T. H. Hutchings, Geo. 
Ball, Leon Blum, Henry Rosenberg and 
about fifteen other capitalists of the city, 
by whom from $200,000 to $500,000 
apiece was contributed to continue con- 
struction. Henrv Rosenberg was its 
first president. 

Under this management it was rapidly 
pushed northw'ard and in 1882 reached 
Dallas and Fort Worth, and at the time 
of its absorption by the Santa Fe system 
in 1887. it had a main line of 517 miles 
from Galveston to Purcell, Indian Terri- 
tory, besides its branches in this State. 
These branches have been extended 
somewhat since, and it now has a total 
mileage of 1,162 miles, 1,058 in Texas, or 
nearly a seventh of the length of its 
system, which has 7,707 miles. The State 
Comptroller's report of Jan. i, 1890, shows 
that it cost to build $23,766,000, that it 
takes about $3,250,000 a year to operate 
it and that its earnings for 1889 w-ere 
$3,761,500. It has 3.231 employes. 

A junction is effected by it with the 
main line of the Atchison, Topeka & 
Santa Fe road at Purcell, and it is thus 
made the Southeasterly grand division of 
the Santa Fe system. Its branches are 
all within the State of Texas, viz. : Alvin 
to Houston, 24 miles; Somerville to 
Conroes, 72 miles; Temple to San 
Angelo, 226 miles: Cleburne to Weather- 
ford, 40 miles, and Cleburne to Paris. 
1^2 miles: and Ladonia to Ilonev Grove. 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



37 



13 miles. Besides Galveston, Houston, 
Brenham, Temple, Lampasas, San 
Angelo, Fort Worth, Dallas, Gainesville 
and Paris thriving cities of the State, are 
on this line or its branches. 

It makes connection with all the rail- 
roads of the State at one or other of 
these points, with the Houston & Texas 
Central; the Southern Pacific ; Houston, 
East & West Texas ; San Antonio & 
Aransas Pass ; International & Great 
Northern ; Missouri, Kansas & Texas ; 
Texas & Pacific; St. Louis, Arkansas & 
Texas; Fort Worth & Denver City; Fort 
Worth & Rijo Grande, and the St. Louis 
& San Francisco ; also at Galveston with 
all the foreign and coastwise steamship 
lines. 

It is a direct route to Kansas City over 
connections with roads of its own system, 
and from there to Chicago ; and is the 
best route from Galveston to all parts of 
the central States of the far West. It 
runs through a better cotton district than 
any of its competitors of Eastern Texas, 
and Galveston has a distinct advantage 
from the vast traffic in that staple it 
facilitates, and from distribution of goods 
in return for that product, over it. It 
hauls to Galveston wool and corn, cattle 
grain and Mexican and Colorado ores, as 
well as cotton and cotton seed, and 
carries out of the city chiefly, general 
merchandise, flour, fruits, vegetables, 
coffee and sugar in large quantities, 
cotton bagging and ties, planting imple- 
ments, coal and coke and block tin. Its 
relative position as a road and its value to 
Galveston are both indicated by the fact 
that in the month of September last 
(1889) it handled 56 per cent of the total 
receipts of cotton at Galveston, and in 
October 47 per cent. 

The traffic report of this road for 188S 
is an interesting exhibit of Galveston's 
strength as a trade center, and of the 
origin of the staples of her commerce, 
and since it also discloses the character- 



istic business of the road, a summary of it 
can hardly be considered a digression 
from the purpose of this chapter. 

The total tonnage carried by the road in 
that year was 696,617, of which 364,997 
tons were carried north and 331,617 tons 
south. Of the north-bound shipments^ 
107,171 tons originated at Galveston; and 
of the south-bound 161,645 tons were 
destined for the city, a total of 268,816 
tons. The tonnage originating on the 
road and carried north was divided as fol- 
lows : cattle, 68,950 tons ; other live 
stock, 9,670 tons; flour and grain, 12,984 
tons; wool, 468 tons; lumber, 108,466 
tons ; the south-bound tonnage had for its 
largest items: cattle, 7,715 and other live 
stock, 3,583 tons; wool, 5,091 tons; lum- 
ber, 18,461 tons ; cotton seed, 23,287 tons ; 
hay, 3,732 tons ; stone for jetties and 
other building material, 35,142 tons. 

Of cottoncarried by it during the year, 
Galveston received more than any mar- 
ket on its line. Of general merchandise, 
a third of that carried by the road nearly, 
originated at Galveston ; of Jumber 30 per 
cent originates in Southeastern Texas on 
its line or on lines connecting with it, and 
it is destined largely for Northern Texas, 
Kansas and Indian Territory, which have 
no timber lands ; of grain and flour, 80 
per cent originated in Kansas and about 20 
per cent was carried north from Galves- 
ton and other places on the line ; of cattle 
and live stock hauled by this road, 87 per 
cent was taken to Kansas City, Chicago 
and St. Louis, the remainder to Galveston ; 
while of wool, which comes over this road 
from Western Texas, over 90 per cent, 
destined for Eastern markets, passed 
through the hands of Galveston shippers. 

The shipments from Galveston by this 
road in 1888 were general merchandise, 
42,125 tons; railroad material for other 
roads in Texas and Mexico, 42,077 tons ; 
coal, 9,807 tons ; flour, 3,826 tons ; salt, 
2,268 tons; bagging and ties, 1,665 tons; 
lumber, 1,452 tons; vegetables and fruit. 



38 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



1,421 tons; cotton seed products, 1,193 
tons; machinery, 764 tons; grain, 573 
tons: total, 107,171 tons. These are the 
commodities, that with cotton, make the 
bulk of the city's business. 

The traffic of the road was greater in 
'89, than in the year preceding it. The 
report of the State Comptroller of Texas 
credits it with a freight traffic of 735,325 
tons, the principal items of which were 
lumber and saw mill products, i7369^ 
tons, live stock 117,859 tons, building 
material 66,066 tons, cotton 89,998 tons, 
cotton seed 44,437 tons, grain 32,495 tons, 
wool 10,238 tons. During the year 440,- 
385 passengers were carried by it. About 
30 freight trains are now run by it daily 
each way, four of them in and four out of 
Galveston, and 26 passenger trains, four 
in and four out of the city. As a member 
of the Santa Fe system, it has ample roll- 
ing stock, including Pullman and chair 
cars for its passenger service. The road 
bed is in course of continuous improve- 
ment, by ballasting with stone, by widen- 
ing cuts and embankments, and by sub- 
stituting steel for iron rail. The bridges 
over the principal streams crossed by the 
road are of iron, and as a whole, its condi- 
tion is as good as that of any road in the 
country. 

As its seaboard terminal, Galveston is 
favored as much as possible by it. The 
road has shops here employing about 150 
hands, and as many more men are on its 
local pay roll. It has freight yards of 
about 700,000 square feet area at the west 
end of the city, and owns 160 acres fronting 
the channel, on the eastern end of the 
island, between Fourth and Tenth streets. 
This was purchased with the view of 
building wharves and elevators, to provide 
facilities for the transhipment of grain 
and other Southwestern products, and the 
management has plans under considera- 
tion for its improvement. 

The company has also along its line, in 
this State, acreage and town lots, for sale 



with some excellent chances for invest- 
ment in the growing towns upon it, in and 
adjacent to which, it offers tracts at from 
$2 to $100 an acre, and lots at corres- 
ponding prices. 

The managing officers of the Santa Fe 
are A. Manvel, president; Geo. Sealv, 
1st vice-president; J. F. Goddard, 3d 
vice-j^resident ; J. W. Rinehart, 4th vice- 
president ; J. H. Scott, general superin- 
tendent ; W. H. Masters, general freight 
agent ; H. G. Thompson, general passen- 
ger and ticket agent; T. W. Jackson, 
general land agent. Mr. Manvel 's head- 
quarters are in Chicago. The others are 
all stationed in the company's general of- 
fice building, corner of Strand and Bath 
avenue, Galveston. 

OTHER RAILROAD MATTERS. 

These three trunk lines have all been 
forehanded in the acquisition of ter- 
minal and warehouse gi'ounds here. The 
International has obtained a portion of the 
water front, upon which to build coal and 
grain elevators, wharves and other facili- 
ties to promote the increased traffic antici- 
pated from improvement of the bar. The 
Southern Pacific, parent corporation of the 
Houston & Texas Central road and Mor- 
gan's Steamship line, has a grant of 
tide lands situated on the harbor opposite 
the city, from the county, for the same 
purpose, and the Gulf, Colorado & 
Santa Fe has established shops and made 
other improvements of a permanent char- 
acter. 

By MEANS OF the Tru.vk Lines run- 
ning to Houston, Galveston has the serv- 
ice of the San Antonio & Aransas Pass 
Railroad, ramifying, with a main line 
and branches 595 miles long, all of South- 
eastern Texas, below the line of the 
Southern Pacific road, and between San 
Antonio and Corpus Christi on the Gulf 
Coast. The lines to Houston also afford 
it the facilities of the Houston, East (Jv: 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



39 



West Texas, a narrow gauge road 192 
miles long, penetrating the pine forests of 
Eastern Texas. 

The Galveston & Western, a nar- 
row gauge line, chiefly used for hauling 
sand, and for local excursions, extends 
for fifteen miles down the Island of Gal- 
veston. It was originally planned to 
make the city the northern terminal of 
a projected line to the City of Mexico, 
but the scheme fell through It is still 
mooted, however, from time to time, as 
likewise, is the project of an air line from 
Galveston to the northern boundary of 
the State, and a grand North and South 
line from some point in the Dakotas to 
Galveston, and also lines from Central 



Kansas, Kansas City and other places 
north. 

A matter of closer concern to the peo- 
ple of Galveston, is the question of a 
bridge to the mainland, periodically raised, 
and lately given rather more attention in 
the press than usual, without, however, 
decisive action. The two railroad bridges 
are temporary structures, without a foot- 
way. The daily market supplies are 
largely brought into the city by small 
craft, and a Union bridge that could be 
used as a public thoroughfare, would be 
a special convenience to the body of the 
people, as well as for trade. It is esti- 
mated that such a bridge could be built 
for $1,000,000. 




BANKING, LOANS, INSURANCE AND REAL ESTATE 




HE fact that a very large 
part of the banking busi- 
ness of Galveston is 
done by private bankers, 
makes it difHcult to 
arrive at the exact 
amount of capital em- 
barked in the regular banking channels of 
the city. It is certain, however, that it is 
at least $io,cxx),ooo in the aggregate, and 
probably more. Of this amount, $1,876,- 
938 is contributed by three established 
national banks, the First National, Gal- 
veston National and National Bank of 
Texas, by a new national bank, the 
American National, now just completing 
its organization, and by one bank with a 
State charter, the Island City Savings 
Bank, which does a commercial business 
also. 

The surplus and undivided profits of 
these five banks, at the time of their 
spring statement, 1890, was nearly $400,- 
000, an amount indicating conservative 
management a general characteristic of 
these institutions. The deposits with the 
five aggregated at the same time $2,640,- 
000, $360,897 of this savings deposits, 
their loans and discounts, $2,500,000 and 
their total resources, $4,300,000. 

There are, at Galveston, four staunch 
private banks. Ball, Hutchings & Co., a 
firm accredited by common report with 
fully $6,000,000 resources, Adoue & 
Lobit, a partnership of the most substan- 
tial individual investments, H. Rosenberg 
and W. L. Moody & Co. A large 
amount of capital is employed here by 
capitalists and agencies, in banking, note 
broking and mortgage loans, and it is 
next to impossible to compute its total. 
A moderate estimate makes the capital 
represented by the private banks at least 



$6,000,000, and by the land and loans 
agencies of the city, $3,275,000. 

It is certainly to be within bounds to con- 
sider the banking capital of a city having 
$25,000,000 of jobbing trade, and with 
cotton, $77,500,000 of annual business, 
as $10,000,000 at least. But other facts 
bear out the statement. The bank clear- 
ings of the year ending Sept. 30, 1889, one 
of the private banks not included, were 
$71,865,673, an average during the cotton 
season of three to four millions a week 
and three to four hundred thousand dol- 
lars in the dull term between the season 
of 1888 and 1889. The increase over the 
year preceding was $15,155,837. or 28 
per cent. The clearings during the season 
just closed, were four to four and a half 
millions a week, indicating for the year 
ending Sept. 30, 1890. $100,000,000 of 
total clearings, as much as the inland cities 
which have twice Galveston's population 
and clearings largely augmented by spec- 
idation and boom. Here to the contrary, 
where business is chieflv legitimate mer- 
chandising the increasing clearings signify 
solidly compacting wealth. 

Eight per cent is the rate of interest 
usually exacted by the banks, but money 
can be obtained as low^ as six. The ruling 
rate of commercial discounts for gilt edged 
paper is 8 and 10 per cent. Exchange, ow- 
ing to the exporting and importing traffic 
of the city, makes a particularly large 
fraction of the business of the banks. 
During the cotton season New York ex- 
change is at a buying rate of a quarter to 
three-eighths discount, and the selling 
rate is par. For the remainder of the 
year the buying rate is par to three- 
eighths discount, according to the cir- 
cumstances of trade, chiefly those of 
cotton transactions, and simihirly, selling 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



41 



an eighth to a quarter premium. For- 
eign exchange is governed by the New 
York rate. 

Mortgage loans are made for the most 
part by the regular loans agencies ; but 
little is done by the private banks. The 
ruling rate on city real estate loans is lo 
and 13 per cent, legal country loans are 
13 per cent. Cotton, as the leading staple 
of trade, makes the great bulk of the busi- 
ness of the banks. After that, general 
merchandising contributes most. 

The following sketches describe the 
banks and loan companies of the city 
more in detail. 

the national banks of galveston. 

The Galveston National Bank, 
corner of Tremont street and the Strand, 
is successor to the Texas Banking and 
Insurance Company, an old and very sub- 
stantial institution, established in 1S70. 
The -facilities of the old bank were of 
a local character and its sphere of action 
somewhat circumscribed, facts largely 
due to its limited capital. These consid- 
erations led to its nationalization in No- 
vember, 1S89. From $300,000, its capi- 
tal was increased to $500,000, paid in, 
and this enlarged capital, supplemented 
by the additional liability of half a mill- 
ion dollars afforded by wealthy and 
responsible stockholders to the depositors, 
was the means of drawing immediately 
to the Galveston National Bank a large 
and substantial patronage, not only from 
the city of Galveston but also from every 
point in the State. 

The management remains in the same 
capable hands, with the addition of Mr. 
L. R. Bergeron, formerly identified with 
other large and influential moneyed insti- 
tutions, as assistant cashier. Mr. R. S. 
Willis continues as president, Mr. H. A. 
Landes, as vice-president, and Mr. T. 
J. Groce, as cashier. The directors are 
Messrs. Willis, Landes and Groce, J. G. 



Goldthwaite, Fen. Cannon, A. C. Baker, 
W. K. McAlpine, J. P. Davie and J. H. 
Burnett. To those acquainted with the 
Galveston business community, these 
names are a '' tower of strength." Mr. 
Willis, as head of the great house of P. 
J. Willis & Bro,, is one of the foremost 
of wSouthern capitalists and merchants. 
Mr. Landes, is of the firm of Wallis, 
Landes & Co., wholesale grocers and 
cotton factors in Galveston for the past 
thirty years. Mr. Groce, a gentleman of 
sterling business qualifications, was for- 
merly of Jemison, Groce & Co., cotton 
factors, and for the past five years vice- 
president of the Texas Banking and 
Insurance Co. The other directors are 
men of high character and solid resources. 
Mr. Goldthwaite is a large stockholder 
in the house of P. J. Willis & Bro. ; Mr. 
Cannon, a grain dealer and extensive 
importer; Mr. Davie, a wealthy hardware 
dealer ; Mr. Baker, a prominent figure in 
the cotton trade of the port, and Messrs. 
McAlpine and Burnett, well-known real 
estate owners of Galveston. 

The deposits of the Galveston National 
Bank, as reported in its ofiicial statement 
to the Comptroller of the Currency at 
Washington, Feb. 38, 1890, were $1,187,- 
670. 58. 

The loans and discounts at the same 
time were reported as, $1,049,003 01. 

The total resources, $3,753,709.33. 

The Galveston National Bank had then, 
besides its capital, $30,038.64 of net 
undivided profits, the accumulation since 
its recent organization. 

The Galveston National Bank lays 
just claim to the largest and most 
comprehensive system of correspondence 
of any Texas bank. It has correspond- 
ents at every banking point in the State 
and substantial representatives at all 
important money centers, principal of 
which are : The Mercantile National 
Bank, the Hanover National Bank and 
the Bank of New York N. B. A., of New 



42 



THE CITY OF GALVESTOy. 



York City : the Hibernia National Bank, 
New Orleans ; the National Bank of Com- 
merce and Continental National Bank, 
.St. Louis ; the National Bank of Com- 
merce and American National Bank, 
Kansas City ; the Corn Exchange Bank, 
Chicago, and the Joint Stock Bank, Lim- 
ited, London. These numerous connec- 
tions enable the Galveston National Bank 
to handle all lines of the banking busi- 
ness in a prompt and thorough manner 
and at the same time materially strengthen 
its present extensive resources. 

The First National Bank, corner of 
Strand and Twenty-second street, was 
organized in 1866 with $200,000 capital. 
It has $300,000 now, and by its statement 
of January 37th last had $100,000 surplus, 
and $54,000 undivided profits besides. Its 
total resources then were $1,198,823, its 
deposits $659,823 and its loans and dis- 
counts $675,777. As a leading bank in 
the principal seaport of the Southwest, 
and one of the primary cotton markets of 
the world, it has a very large collection 
and exchange business ; and for these 
transactions maintains the relation of corre- 
spondent with the following institutions 
in other leading cities: New York, the 
National Park bank ; Boston, the Mav- 
erick National ; Chicago, the First Na- 
tional ; St. Louis, the Third National ; 
New Orleans, the Louisiana National and 
N. O. Canal & Banking Co. ; San Fran- 
cisco, the Pacific National, and London, 
England, Kleinvort Sons & Co. 

The First National of Galveston has 
been fortunate in its management. Its 
directory is made up of the foremost busi- 
ness men of the city, and they have given 
it a progressive policy. It was the first 
bank here to reduce the rate of exchange 
and discount after the war, and it has been 
as liberal in its accommodations to local 
enterprises as sound methods would per- 
mit. Julius Runge has been its president 
since it was organized in 1S79; E. S. 
Flint, of Lammers & Flint, cotton and 



wool factors, is vice president ; L. M. 
Openheimer, cashier. The directors are 
Julius Runge, M. Lasker, Leon Blum. 
John Reymershoffer, Albert Weis, Julius 
Weber and H. Kempner. 

Mr. Runge is German consul here and 
city treasurer. As administrator of the 
city's finances (in his capacity of chair- 
man of the Finance Committee of the 
Board of Aldermen of Galveston) be- 
tween 1877 and 1880, he was chiefly 
instrumental in refunding the city's 
indebtedness and restoring her credit, 
which after the war, was for some time at 
a very low ebb. He is a leading spirit in 
many other enterprises here besides the 
bank, in fact was a pi-ime mover in many 
of the most notable corporate concerns of 
the city, among others, the Galveston 
Cotton and Woolen mills, the new P acking 
Company, cotton compresses, street rail- 
ways, land and loan companies, etc. He 
is a member of the firm of Kauffman &; 
Runge, cotton factors, and is president, 
also, of the Cotton Exchange of the city. 
Mr. Lasker is a capitalist and land 
owner. Mr. Reymershoffer is one of the 
proprietors of the Texas Star Flour Mills 
here. Mr. Weis is a wholesale dry goods 
dealer. Mr. Weber is the representative 
here of the great German cotton house of 
Knoop Frericks & Co. Leon Blum is 
the senior member of Leon & H. Blum, 
wholesale dry goods dealei"s, and president 
of the Leon & H. Blum Land Company, 
both ranking among the largest enterprises 
of their kind in the West or Southwest. 
II. Kempner is one of the largest capi- 
talists in Texas, and is a cotton factor, in 
which trade he has long received on con- 
signment, more cotton than any other firm 
in the Southwest. 

The National Bank of Texas, 
corner of Twenty-second and Strand, had, 
at the time of its statement of Sept. 30th 
last, total resources of $433,633. Of 
this $267,608 was loans and discounts. 
The capital stock of this bank, $100,000, 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



is all paid in, and it appears also that it 
has a $20,000 surplus and $33,000 of 
undivided profits. The deposits with it 
daily are about $175,000. Its loans and 
discounts run from $350,000 to $335,000. 
It has especial facilities for prompt 
collections and returns throughout Texas. 
Its New York correspondents are the 
American Exchange National and the 
Importers and Traders' National. 

The National Bank of Texas has had 
good management from its foundation in 
1866, and it is in hands now that continue 
to give character and standing. Col. W. 
L. Moody is its president, W. L. Moody, 
Jr., son of Col. Moody, banker and cotton 
factor of New York and Galveston, is 
vice-president, G. D. Morgan is 
cashier. The directors are Mr. Wallis, 
W. L. Moody and W. L. Moody. Jr., T. 
C. Thompson, of the Thompson Drug 
Co ; J. F. Smith, of J. F. Smith & Bro., 
sash, doors and blinds; Geo. M. Courts, 
of Clark & Courts, printers and station- 
ers, and Col. Walter Gresham, attorney 
and legislator. 

Cashier Morgan has been connected 
with this bank for the past seven years, 
He was formerly its teller and was elected 
cashier at the January meeting of the 
directors. 

A New National Bank, the Ameri- 
can, was organized lately by the election 
of directors as follows: N. Weekes, F. 
Lammers, G. B. Miller, J. D. Skinner, 
John Focke, Gust Heye, W. F. Ladd, J. 
E. Wallis and J. E. Rogers. Mr. 
Weekes was chosen president, Mr. 
Lammers vice-president and Mr. Ed. 
McCarthy, formerly cashier of the Island 
City Savings Bank, cashier. The capital 
stock of this bank is $500,000. It will 
be ready for business about the first of 
June. 

state and private baxks. 

The Island City Savings Bank of 
Galveston, which has enjoyed a very 



large measure of prosperity and success 
of late years, has recently, by a transfer of 
interests, passed under control of the 
Citizens' Loan Company, which, as the 
account of it on another page of this 
work discloses, counts its stock in the 
bank amongst its most substantial 
assets. In consequence of this transfer, 
there has been a change, lately, in the 
executive personnel of the bank, but it 
proceeds along the same lines which have 
widened its sphere as a savings institu- 
tion and broadened its scope for commer- 
cial business at one and the same time. 

Mr. Albert VVeis, whose manufacturing 
and commercial interests are referred to 
in another part of this book, has been 
elected president of the bank. His 
administrative abilities are of so high an 
order that they have been accorded like 
recognition in other important local enter- 
prises with which he is identified. Mr. 
Jos. F. Campbell, cashier, is a gentleman 
of large and varied business experience, 
and of an energy and application that 
particulary fit him for the position to 
which he has been chosen. Mr. F. Wool- 
verton, assistant cashier, has been con- 
nected, for many years, with the National 
Bank of Texas, and assumes this new 
position with a ripened experience that 
makes him a valuable accession to the 
staff of the institution. 

The directors chosen for the ensuing 
year are the following prominent and 
successful business men of Galveston : 
M. L^llmann, of Ullmann, Lewis & Co., 
wholesale grocers, who is also vice-presi- 
dent of the bank, a merchant so widely and 
favorably known that his name is a source 
of strength to the institution ; Julius 
Runge, of the firm of Kauffman & Runge, 
and president of the First National Bank 
of Galveston ; Gus Lewy, of Gus Lewy 
& Co., wholesale grocers; M. Lasker, 
capitalist and president of the Lasker 
Real Estate Co. ; Robert Bornefeld, cot- 
ton buyer ; R. B. Hawley, of Hawley & 



44 



THE rirr OF GALVESTON. 



Ileideiiheimer. commission merchants and 
importers of coffee ; J. Weinberger, of 
Ratto, Lang & Weinberger, candy manu- 
facturers, importers and wholesale deal- 
ers in fruits ; J. S. Rogers, manager of 
the Texas Co-operative Association. The 
character and standing of these gentlemen 
is a guarantee that the reputation estab- 
lished by the bank will be maintained 
unimpaired, and that its business will de- 
velop in the future as it has in the past. 

On April ist. 1S90. when a statement 
was rendered by it. the Island City Sav- 
ings Bank had a capital paid in of $100,- 
000 and a surplus of $100,000 and had 
undivided profits besides of $^0,900.37. 
The deposits with it at the same time 
aggregated $627,360.80. and of total 
resources aggregating $896,274.49. there 
was credited to loans and discounts, 
$528,746.19, to sight ex'change on New 
York and other points. $219,222.19 and 
to cash on hand $110,834.60. 

vSavings deposits of $360,897.67. were a 
showing of its utility to the thrifty work- 
ing classes of the city. Four per cent 
interest is paid on such deposits, which 
are taken in amounts as small as fifty 
cents. It thus affords a safe and remuner- 
ative depository to persons who are en- 
couraged, by its assistance, to economize 
sums that might otherwise, perhaps, be 
frittered awav. 

While the savings department of the 
bank is of special importance to it. and 
will be conducted and guarded with jeal- 
ous care, its commercial business is by no 
means of small proportions. Exchange 
and collections are notable features of 
this branch of its business. It has facili- 
ties for collections on all Texas points 
that are unsurpassed, and has on its list 
of correspondents the following banks in 
cities doing a considerable business with 
Galveston : In New York City, the Bank 
of New York (N. B A.), and the Chemi- 
cal National ; in New Orleans, the State 
National ; in St. Louis, the Fourth 



National ; in Kansas Citv. the Midland 
National; in Chicago, the Northwestern 
National, and in Cincinnati, the Equitable 
National. Bills are also drawn bv it on 
all principal cities of this countrv and 
Europe. 

Correspondence and inquirv is invited 
by the management of the bank. It 
will have careful, prompt and business- 
like consideration. The methods em- 
ployed bv the bank are similar to those in 
vogue in like institutions elsewhere Its 
cashier and subordinates are all under 
bond, and are forbidden pursuits conflict- 
ing with their duties. Its books are regu- 
larly inspected by its directory. It is the 
only bank in the State authorized by law 
to receive trust funds for heirs and minors. 
It has been established for twentv years. 

Ball, Hutchixgs & Co.. corner of 
vStrand and Twenty-fourth street, have 
long been the most notable private bank- 
ers of the South. Thev are ranked un- 
commonly high among bankers generally 
as to their resources ; they have larger 
transactions than many of the incorporated 
banks of the country, and they carry the 
name of Galveston to manv remote places 
where little else than their high standing 
is known of its general business affairs. 
Their name is made familiar by exchange 
drawn and transactions with the National 
City n^\d Fourth National banks, New 
York ; the National Bank of North 
America, Boston ; the Mechanics' bank, 
and St. Louis National, St. Louis ; the 
Louisiana National and Whitney National, 
New Orleans, and Baring Bros.. London. 

The surviving partners of the original 
firm of Ball. Hutchings & Co., Messrs. 
J. H. Hutchings and George Sealy. are 
men of large and valuable property pos- 
sessions. Mr. Hutchings is identified by 
interests in them, with most of the promi- 
nent enterprises of the city. He is presi- 
dent of the City Company, which laid the 
foundations for the municipality of Gal- 
veston 30 vears ago. and from which all 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



45 



the land titles of the city originate ; has 
been president of the Gah^eston Wharf 
Co., which controls the water front of the 
port and is engaged in cotton compresses 
and other ventures of every sort. 

Mr. Scaly has been president of the 
Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe R. R., and 
was one of the most active in its reorgani- 
zation and building after the reverses at 
one time met with. He is a director and 
prominent member of the Cotton Ex- 
change, and he has interests also in very 
many of the corporate enterprises of the 
island. He is now building on Bath ave- 
nue, what gives promise of being the 
finest private residence in all Texas. The 
firm owns also extensive sugar plantations 
on the Brazos in Texas. 

Nor has their interest in Galveston been 
manifested only in the material advance- 
ment of their environment. Mr. Sealy 
has contributed both time and money for 
religious, charitable and educational pur- 
poses. In all popular measures, as the 
movement for deep water, he, acting for 
his firm as well as for himself, has exerted 
him to the utmost to forward the matter 
in hand. Upon occasions of public mo- 
ment, the advice, as well as influence of the 
firm, is early solicited and is as promptly 
enlisted, and the words of the junior part- 
ner have weight in the counsels of the 
Cotton Exchange, which is the commer- 
cial chamber of the city. 

Mr. Hutchings came to Galveston in 
1S45. He engaged in merchandising busi- 
ness, and was for a number of years in 
partnership with John Sealy (deceased) at 
Sabine, as cotton factors and general 
tradesmen. The firm of Ball, Hutchings 
& Co., comprising the interests of Geo. 
Ball — the founder of the Ball School here 
— of Mr Hutchings and Mr. John Sealy 
(the founder of the Sealy Hospital), was 
established in 1S54 to do a general busi- 
ness in cottoiT and the staples, with bank- 
ing in connection. Gradually the banking 
business overshadowed all other interests 



of the firm and afl^r the war trading was 
discontinued. Mr. Geo. Sealy accj^uired his 
interest in 1S65. The surviving widows 
of Messrs. Ball and John Sealy also have 
an interest each in the bank. 

The transactions of this bank during 
the past year, it is said, reached the enor- 
mous aggregate of $90,000,000. 

Adoue & LoBiT, bankers, at Strand 
and Twentieth street, are rated as having 
resources quite as substantial as any 
banking house in Texas. Their invest- 
ments in the most profitable enterprises 
of the city are evidence of that. Mr. 
Adoue is president of the Galveston 
Cotton Seed Oil Mill, one of the largest 
in the Southwest, is one of the principals 
in the Galveston Steamship and Lighter 
Co., vice-president of the Texas Ice and 
Cold Storage Co., president of the 
Electric Light Co., president of the 
Galveston Bagging and Cordage Co. ; and 
the firm is interested in many other 
concerns here and in other parts of the 
State. He and Mr. Lobit are partners 
also in the banking firm of Flippen, 
Adoue & Lobit of Dallas. In any and 
every undertaking with which they may 
be connected, they exhibit a most ener- 
getic and enterprising spirit. 

Messrs. Adoue & Lobit began business 
as merchandisers and bankers in the 
country in 1865 ; but, foreseeing the rise of 
Galveston, established themselves here in 
1S73, and have devoted themselves to 
banking business. They have the patron- 
age of the largest business houses and 
many of the corporations here, and they 
do more foreign exchange business than 
any bank of the city. Mr. Adoue is the 
consul here for Sweden and Norway. 

W. L. Moody & Co., bankers and 
cotton factors, corner of Twenty-second 
and Strand, have a capital embarked in 
their business (according to its exigen- 
cies) of from $500,000 to $750,000. Col. 
Moody, senior member of the firm, has 
been a cotton factor here since 1S66, and 




'UESEN r.\ I 1\1-. Ml.N OK GAIAKSTl)."' 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



47 



having been prominent also in public 
affairs in which the city has been espec- 
ially concerned, like the movement to 
secure deep water for the port, has con- 
siderably more than a local reputation. 
He was a gallant soldier of the war, and 
concluded his service \n behalf of the 
South, possessed of both scars and laurels. 
He was president of the Cotton Exchange 
for twelve years, was one of the most 
active promoters of the project for the 
Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad, has 
been a State legislator, and his name has 
frequently been mentioned for higher 
offices of a similar character. He dis- 
played his financial abilities while a mem- 
ber of the State Legislature, by negotiat- 
ing sale of nearly $2,000,000 of State 
bonds ; he has been a director of many 
enterprises, such as railroads, banks, etc.. 
and until quite recently, besides being a 
director of the Texas Banking & Insur- 
ance Co., was president of the National 
Bank of Texas, which has its banking 
house in his building. 

His qualifications for financial business 
are thus clearly indicated. He has asso- 
ciated with him, his son W. L. Jr., who 
is the manager of the New York branch 
of W. L. Moody & Co.'s bank. F. B. 
Moody, also his son, and L. F. Moody, his 
brother. The banking house of Moody 
& Co. was only established in 1887. but 
already its business is such as to call for a 
separation of it from the cotton business 
of the firm. These interests however, 
the growth of years, are too large hastily 
to abandon. Last season W. L. Moody 
& Co. handled 25,000 bales of cotton and 
300,000 pounds of wool. 

As bankers, the firm purchase and sell 
stocks on commission and handle bonds 
and investment securities. The New 
York concern is at 44 Wall street. 

H. Rosenberg's private bank ranks 
high among the financial agencies of Gal- 
veston. Mr. Rosenberg began business 



here in 1S43 as a dry goods merchant, and 
has been a banker exclusively since 1874. 
In that year he organized the Galveston 
Banking and Trust Company, which he 
has since succeeded. He maintains the 
only safe deposit vaults of the city. 

Mr. Rosenberg owns a great deal of 
rental property in Galveston and has 
large landed possessions besides, in differ- 
ent parts of the State. He is a stock- 
holder in most of the corporate enterprises 
of the city, and is vice-president of the 
Galveston Wharf Company. The Rosen- 
berg School, shown in an illustration of 
this work, was built by him, and presented, 
completely appointed, with its site, to the 
city. The building alone cost $70,000. 

loan agencies of the city. 

There are twelve organizations en- 
gaged in loans and building operations at 
Galveston, and lately the prospectus of a 
new Co-operative Savings Association 
has been issued. Three of these are loan 
companies exclusively, long established, 
very successful, of large capitalization 
and resident stockholders only. These 
three, the Texas Land and Loan Com- 
pany, the Citizens' Loan Company and 
the Lasker Real Estate Association, have 
$1,368,500 of capital paid in, and accu- 
mulated profits ; the Texas Land and Loan 
Co $530,000 of cash capital and earn- 
ings, the Citizens' $536,000 of capital 
and undivided profits and the Lasker 
Association $302,000 of capital and sur- 
plus. 

The Citizens' Loan Company, which 
has offices on Strand between Twentieth 
and Twenty-first streets, was chartered in 
April, 1879, with $300,000 capital stock, 
to be paid in installments by the subscrib- 
ers, for the purpose, primarily, of accu- 
mulating funds to aid its members to 
acquire and improve Galveston real 
estate ; but also to acquire both real and 



48 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



personal property as a corporation, and 
to loan on unencumbered real estate, 
stocks, bonds and other securities. This 



of net earnings, three dividends of two 
per cent each had been declared during 
the year, leaving the $36,000 of undi- 







n\ I I S '^ '^' :-^ '"-B^fflE!! 






RESIDENCE EAST END OK GALVESTON. 



latter, in the course of business, has 
become its specialty. 

From the report of its auditors, dated 
April 9, 1S90, its eleventh annual state- 
ment, it appears that it has total assets of 
$746,134 as compared with $708,320 a 
year before, and that the principal items 
of assets were $348,798 of loans on real 
estate, stocks, etc., 1501 shares of the First 
National Bank of Galveston, valued at 
$241,615 and 9^3 shares (a controlling 
interest, lately acquired by it) of the 
Island City Savings Bank, valued at 
$238,726. Accounted liabilities were its 
capital stock of $550,000, five per cent 
bonds outstanding to the amount of $41.- 
000. bills payable $119,000 and $36,000 
of undivided profits. 

The total income for the vear was 
$72,263, the disbursements on account of 
management $9,648. From the $62,614 



vided profits spoken of, still remaining. 
The gross profits compared to capital 
stock were 13 per cent, to assets 9^, 
and the net profits were 11.^ per 
cent of the capital stock and 8i of assets. 

It appears from this statement that the 
Citizens' Loan Company is not only one 
of the most prosperous and substantial of 
the financial agencies of Galveston, but 
that it does a conservative and sure busi- 
ness and in its aggregated transactions 
suffers nothing bv comparison with some 
of the local banks. 

Of the original management of the 
company, one official only is still direct- 
ing its affairs, Mr. Albert VVeis of Weis 
Bros., wholesale dry goods of the city. 
Mr. AV'eis is also largely interested in 
manufacturing and other business projects 
here. He is president of the Citizens', 
and has associated witli him in its direc- 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



49 



tory, Julius Weber, Gus. Lewy, C. Fow- 
ler, Jr., H. J. Runge, M. Lasker and J. 
Rosenfield, all prominent business men of 
Galveston, notable as traders in cotton, 
merchandise, real estate, etc. Mr. Rosen- 
field is vice-president of the company, 
Mr W. F. Beers of Beers, Kennison & 
Co., insurance agents, seci^etary, and Mr. 
R. V. Davidson attorney. 

The company, as has been said, has 
lately bought the majority of the stock of 
the Island City Savings Bank, a local insti- 
tution of substantial resources and high 
credit. 

The Lasker Real Estate Associa- 
tion, is a loan and investment company, 
chartered by the State, engaged in busi- 
ness here and in other parts of Texas for 
the last four years, and having $252,500 
paid in capital and a surplus of $50,000. 
Its operations are confined to improved 
property, located in Texas. 

The loans of this association are made 
upon as liberal terms as those of any 
company engaged in the business in the 



State. Principal and interest may be 
paid in monthly installments. The 
amount-loaned depends on the value and 
prospects of the security. Interest is 8 
to 13 per cent. The association buys 
property and holds it for rental chiefly. 

Those interested are men as substantial 
as any in Texas. Mr. Morris Lasker, 
president of the company, is one of the 
largest real estate owners of the State. 
He was formerly a merchant here in the 
wholesale grocery business, but is inter- 
ested now in enterprises of a miscella- 
neous character, such as the Galveston 
Cotton and Woolen Mills, the Lone Star 
Cracker Factory, the Citizens' Loan Co. 
and the First National Bank, etc., of this 
city, in all which he is a director. Mr. 
Adoue, the vice-president, is of the firm 
of Adoue & Lobit, bankers of this city, 
and Flippen, Adoue & Lobit, bankers of 
Dallas, is an ex-president of the Electric 
Light Co. of Galveston, and now presi- 
dent of several other local corporations. 

The secretary and treasurer of the 




SUBURBAN RESIDENCE, GALVESTON. 



50 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



association is Mr, D. Sachs, a resident 
here for several years, a graduate of 
Heidelberg, where he matriculated as 
Doctor of Laws. He has an ample ex- 
perience of the business he is entrusted 
with. The offices of the association are 
on Mechanic street, between Twenty- 
first and Twenty-second. 

REAL ESTATE AND LANDS. 

Prospective enlargement of the Island 
City, disclosed by the favorable congres- 
sional action on the Galveston harbor bill, 
has enlivened the real estate business 
already. In the transfers of the fii'st nine 
weeks of the current year values aggre- 
gating $3,000,000 were involved ; in the 
first three months of the year, $7,000,000 
worth of property changed hands ; and 
the sales since show a steady weekly in- 
crease. Outside capital gave the first 
impetus, but the residents of the city 
display their faith in its future by liberal 
investment themselves. Some of the 
most experienced and enterprising of 
Western operators, anticipating a rise in 
prices, and desirous to participate in it at 
the outset, have been drawn here, and 
there is every reason to believe that a 
genuine revival in realty has begun. 

But the influences forwarding Galveston 
are in esse as well as in posse. The sub- 
structure of a solid city has been concreted 
here by fifty years — the war excepted — of 
steady growth. Once only in the history 
of the place has the spirit of inflation 
resulted in boom, in 1S71, when many 
who had purchased on a rising market 
were forced to a sacrifice to meet the pay- 
ments they were pledged to make ; and 
this experience was so impressive a 
lesson, that it accounts, in part, for the 
very moderate prices of Galveston prop- 
erty to-day. 

An enhancement of property valua- 
tions at Galveston may be predicated upon 
material conditions. Upon a growth in 



population during the last decade from 
22,250 to 51,500, or 133 per cent. Upon 
a growth in manufactures during the same 
period from $2,375,000 to $5,000,000, or 
115 per cent. Upon a growth in trade 
at the same time, not counting the 
extraordinary Western transit business of 
the port, developed in the last ten 
years, from $30,000,000 for the year, 
to $87,500,000, or 293 per cent, 
and of exports, foreign, from $16,750,000 
to $52,000,000, or 212 per cent. And 
incidentally, upon the metropolitanization 
of the city meanwhile, metropolitaniza- 
tion through permanent improvements of 
architecture, of water supply and public 
works ; through multiplying social and 
educational advantages, and its growing 
favor as a summer resort. 

Whatever her aspirations as the sea- 
port of the West, the growth of the city 
is furthered most by the aggrandizement 
of Texas. Since 18S0 the population of 
the State has increased from 1,500,000 to 
2,500,000, at the least 75 per cent; the 
crop product from $85,000,000 to $170,- 
000,000 market values, 100 per cent ; the 
the railroad mileage from 4,000 to 8,400, 
1 10 per cent, and the assessed valuations 
from $304,000,000 to $729,000,000, 140 
percent. And still, settlement of the un- 
occupied areas of the State proceeds at a 
rate that has evoked the prediction of a 
banker of Galveston, that the growth of the 
State in the last ten years, will be re- 
peated in the next three. 

The animation of the Galveston real 
estate market is exhibited rather in a 
greater demand for property than in 
rapidly advancing prices, except, perhaps, 
in the West End, where factories are con- 
centring. Property here is still very 
much lower than in Dallas, for instance, 
or in other prosperous cities of the 
country ; and beginning at its circumfer- 
ence, this demand for realty has gradually 
extended inward to the very center of the 
city. The transfers at first were mainly 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



51 



of acreage and outside tracts. The effect 
of an active market has been to list im- 
proved property in the business precincts , 
which has not been on sale for years. 

The prices prevailing at the beginning 
of the year, are given as follows by a firm 
long established here in the land and real 
estate business, and doing perhaps the 
largest business of any in that line. 

Property in Galveston is sold by the lot, 
single or double, usually. Blocks from 
the bay front on avenue A, to avenue M 
inclusive, are 300 feet by 360, and com- 
prise ten lots 26x120 feet each. Beyond 
that there are fourteen lots to the block, 
and in the outskirts four. The Strand is 
the principal wholesale street. It is well 
built up and but little of it is for sale. 
Tremont is the main avenue north and 
south from the bay to the beach. Five 
years ago $30,006 was offered and re- 
fused for the improved corner of Tremont 
and Strand. About the same time $20,000 
was considered a good price for property 
on Strand. Improved property there is 
worth $15,000 to $40,000 according to the 
area, single or double, of the lot, and the 
value set on the improvements. 

Not counting improvements, lots on 
Market or Tremont street, in the retail 
quarter, are worth $20,000. There is little 
if any here for sale. Six lots 42x120 each 
at Eighteenth and Market streets, just on 
the edge of the business quarter, could be 
got for $15,000 last winter. They have 
certainly advanced since. The fashion- 
able residence quarter lies along and ad- 
jacent to Tremont street and Broadway. 
First-class inside residence sites are worth 
$1,500 to $2,000 a lot; less choice loca- 
tions $1,000; on Broadway or Tremont 
street, $2,500. These prices are for lots 
from ten to twenty blocks from the busi- 
ness center. Outskirts lots, are worth $300 
to $500, and residence lots near factories 
or in other depreciating situations $500 to 
$800. Manufacturing sites, with ship- 
ping facilities adjacent, are worth $9,000 



or $ 10,000 a block of fourteen lots. There 
has been an advance of 30 to 40 per cent 
in a year, in West End sites, due to the 
building of factories there. Acreage out- 
side the corporate limits, at Fifty-sixth 
street, suitable for platting, has been sell- 
ing at $150 to $250 an acre. 

Topographical conditions make the 
probability of growth greatest westward. 
The eastern end of the city is already 
densely settled. The gradients of the island 
are such as to make both streets and lots im- 
mediately available. There is ample room 
adown the length of the island for exten- 
sion, and for choice of sites for any pur- 
pose, business, residence or manufactur- 
ing. The titles are all derived from the 
Spanish grant of Seguin, through Me- 
nai-d, founder of the city, and the 
City Company, his assigns. Abundant 
water is provided for all by the 
city's new artesian works. There is 
a gas and an electric lighting company 
having public franchises, besides the mu- 
nicipal plant. Street cars afford transit 
facilities everywhere in the city. No 
onerous burdens of taxes for householders 
or licenses for manufacturers are levied. 
Taxes are $2.57!^ per hundred for all pur- 
poses, city, county and State. Business 
generally is brisk, but living is as cheap 
as anywhere in the land. And the cli- 
mate, take it for all in all, is very near the 
golden mean. The estates of J. C. 
League and J. L. Darragh, have city 
lands for sale, and the City Company also 
has tracts to dispose of. 

The income from rental property is 
likely to increase as prices enhance. 
Rents are now quite low. Especially 
so for business property, for which leases 
are usually given running from 3 to 5 
years. A three or four story place, suit- 
able for a warehouse or factory, rents for 
from $250 to $325 a month. A large 
store, suitable for retail dry goods or 
business of that character, in a very good 
location, would bring $250 to $300 a 



52 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



month. Offices rent for $12.50 to $25 a 
month. Residences of eight to thirteen 
rooms $50 to $65, of six rooms $35 and 
of four $8 to $12.50, 



lands: The L. and H. Blum Land Co., 
P. J. Willis & Bro., the Lasker Real 
Estate Association, Col. Walter Giesham 
and H. M. Trueheart & Co. 




TRUEHEART &• COMPANY'S BLOCK. 



Farm lands on Galveston Island, from 
the nature of the soil chiefly desirable for 
truck, are worth, near the city, $50 to 



$7: 



acre ; twelve or fifteen miles out, 



$15 to $30. Unimproved lands in South- 
eastern Texas, in the district contiguous 
to the city, are worth $1.50 to $4.00 an 
acre; improved lands, $5 to $10, ac- 
cording to situation and improvements. 
They are excellent, as a rule, for cotton, 
corn, vegetables and both the temperate 
and semi-tropical fruits, and they afford, 
in many parts, the finest of pasture. Such 
lands can be purchased in tracts of from 5 
to 10,000 acres. The Galveston, Houston 
& Henderson R'y has a 9,000 and a 10.000 
acre tract on its line within 25 miles from 
Galveston, which can be bought for $2.50 
to $3 for the 9,000 and $5 to $10 for the 
10,000 acre tract. The tide lands near Gal- 
veston are reclaimable only by dyking. On 
the mainland they can be bought for $2.50 
to $3 an acre. The following Galveston 
parties are very large owners of Texas 



PROMIXEXT AGENTS OF GALVESTON. 

H. M. Trueheart & Co., land agents. 
Twenty-second street, between Mechanic 
and Strand, are leading dealers in Galves- 
ton property and in lands all over Texas, 
established in 1S57, and transacting most 
of the local business of that character for 
many years past. Incidentally they do 
quite a rental business, and have been 
entrusted with the management of a num- 
ber of estates and properties here as well 
as throughout Texas ; and they own and 
represent owners, of tracts on the Island 
of Galveston outside the city, which have 
been divided into 10, 15 and 30 acre lots, 
for truck and dairy farms. One of the 
most notable sales recently made here was 
that effected by them, by which 1,300 
acres of the mainland, across Galveston 
Bay from the city, was purchased by a 
syndicate to found a suburban city. These 
parties afterward disposed of this tract at a 
considerable advance, and the purchasers 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



53 



from them are maturing the project for 
the new town. 

Messrs. Trueheart & Co. are also the 
representatives of owners, resident and 
non-resident, having between three and 
four million acres of Texas lands, much 
of it in the market. In this aggregate is 
comprised farming, ranch and grazing 
lands in all parts of the State, and lands 
also in that vast timbered region of the 
State which the government statistics 
show is twice as great as the timbered 
area of Alabama and Mississippi com- 
bined, though these are in no wise in- 
significantly clothed with forest them- 
selves. Besides headquarters here, at the 
metropolis and chief seaport of Texas, 
they have associate local agents in every 
county, and traveling agents ; connections 
giving them unsurpassed facilities for 
sales of lands to immigrants and investors, 
and for examining, surveying, protecting, 
rendering for and paying taxes, and in 
fact all matters pertaining to lands all 
over Texas. Transactions 
can thus be effected as 
well or better than can be 
done by a local agent di- 
rect, and at no greater ex- 
pense to the owner. The 
long experience of the firm 
in the business, qualifies it 
thoroughly to give infor- 
mation with respect to these 
lands ; and is a guarantee 
to those having relations 
with them of fair treat- 
ment. 

Mr. Trueheart began 
business here in company 
with his father, J. O. True- 
heart. In 1 87 1, Mr. John 
Adriance became a part- 
ner. In 1878, Mr. Lucian 
Minor acquired an interest, 
and these gentlemen are the firm still. 
They have been .very successful in the 
business and have considerable property 



of their own, together with investments 
in other local enterprises. 

In the compilation of this work, this 
firm has been accepted as competent 
authority with respect to property values, 
and the figures quoted in this chapter of 
the book are largely based upon their 
opinions and statements. 

Mr. Trueheart's residence is the subject 
of an illustration in another part of this 
work. A building owned by him is also 
shown herein. 

Hardy Solomon & Co., real estate 
agents of long experience in the business 
at Kansas City, Wichita, Kansas, and 
other rapidly growing cities of the West, 
have recently established themselves here, 
and have opened an office in the Mensing 
building, corner of Twenty-second and 
Strand. They have been impressed with 
the advantages Galveston affords for in- 
vestment, in the comparatively low price 
of real estate here, the prospects presented 
by the growth of the city in population, 




MOODY BUILDING, STRAND AND TWENTY-SECOND STREET. 



the manufacturing progress, and the cer- 
tainty of the improvement of the harbor, 
and they will bring to bear, besides their 



54 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



knowledge of the business, the facilities 
derived by relations established with cor- 
respondents of means and entei-prise 
throughout the North, East and West. 

Mr, Hardy Solomon, senior member of 
this new firm, is a Virginian by birth, but 
has been engaged the greater part of his 
life in promoting the growth of Western 
communities as a real estate operator. His 
son, Mr. Albert C. Solomon, and Mr. F. 
S. Burt, are associated with him. When 
these gentlemen left Wichita to establish 
themselves here, the press of that city 
spoke of their removal to another field 
with regret, and commended them to the 
people of Galveston in terms of unquali- 
fied praise. 

They propose to buy, sell and trade 
property of all kinds on commission, es- 
pecially city property, to negotiate loans 
and handle investment funds ; and they 
have already given an earnest of their in- 
tentions by advertising liberally, not only 
their own business, but the superior at- 
tractions of Galveston also both for busi- 
ness and as a place of residence. 

Seabrook W. Sydnor, real estate 
agent. Twenty-third street, Galveston 
National Bank building, has been estab- 
lished in that line here since 1870, and 
many important property transactions have 
been effected by his instrumentality, dur- 
ing that period. Negotiations of an un- 
common character are entrusted him at 
this very moment. The most momentous 
land and investment enterprises perhaps, 
now in progress in Texas. He is agent 
here for the Kansas & Texas Investment 
Co., and the New Birmingham Iron & 
Land Co., who are owners of the Tosse 
Belle Furnace, giving employment to 450 
men, organizations especially formed to 
present the natural advantages of New 
Birmingham, consisting of vast deposits 
of the finest iron. 

Mr. Sydnor is also the representative at 
Galveston and Houston of the National 
Building, Loan & Protective Union, of 



Minneapolis-, ^linn.. which has an author- 
ized capital of $50,000,000, and branches 
in many of the large cities of the country. 
Shares of this company mature in five 
years and return 20 per cent per annum to 
the investors in them, instead of 3 to 6 per 
cent, the ordinary savings bank rate. He 
represents also (with A. J, Owens), the 
Kansas Investment Co., of Topeka, Kan., 
which has $600,000 capital, and money to 
loan on city property and improved farms 
and ranches. 

Mr. Sydnor has lately closed a number 
of large deals in Texas lands, involving 
several hundred thousand acres. Opera- 
tions of that character are a specialty with 
him, but he has city of Galveston property 
also listed with him, houses to rent here, 
and is doing in fact a general real estate and 
loan business 

Blagge, Bertrand & Co., real estate 
and insurance agents, of 2212 Mechanic 
street, is the old insurance firm of Blagge 
& Bertrand. with an additional member. 
Mr. D. R. Beatty, formerly of Kansas City, 
and an additional vocation, viz., real 
estate. As real estate agents they will 
handle city and suburban propert}- of all 
kinds and State lands. They recently 
made a $40,000 deal of acreage in Sec. i, 
Galveston county, and have others on the 
tapis. 

As an insurance firm they will con- 
tinue to act as district agents for the 
Oakland Home Insurance Co. of Cali- 
fornia, and as local agents for the Lion 
Fire of England, which has $10,000,000 
capital, the Fireman's Fund of San 
Francisco, $2,314,776 of assets, and the 
Standard Accident of Detroit, $300,000 
of assets. They have followed the insur- 
ance business for years here, are well 
known, responsible and popular. 

Mr. Blagge, of this firm, is a native of 
Galveston, and is said to have been the 
first child born on the Island. He is the 
secretarv of the Board of Underwriters of 
Galveston, hereinafter mentioned. | 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



55 



BUILDING IMPROVEMENTS. 

The progress of Galveston is plainly 
perceptible in the permanent and expens- 
ive building improvements of the last 
few years. In the residence districts 
especially, this advancement is manifest, 
but it is scarcely less strikingly exhibited 
in the new public edifices, and the struct- 
ures intended for business or factory 
purposes that have been raised, or are in 
process of construction. 

The great fire of 1885, of which, as has 
been said in the chapter of this work 
describing the city, scarcely a trace re- 
mains, was not altogether an unmixed 
evil. The loss by it, $1,389,000, was 
covered by insurance to the amount of 
$1,138,000, and restoration of the burnt 
district awakened a spirit of emulation 
amongst the home-builders of the city, 
which has beautified all the residence 
quarter. There has been a visible im- 
provement in the architecture of .the city 
since, and lately very many costly 
mansions have been erected. Among 
those now building, the Gresham, Sealy, 
Lasker, Cannon, Seeligson and Lufkin 
mansions, are most notable. On the two 
first $100,000 each is to be expended 
and about $20,000 each on the others. 

The list of public buildings completed 
within a twelvemonth or under way, 
includes the new City Hall, which cost 
$50,000, the John Sealy Hospital, $50,- 
000. or jointly with the medical depart- 
ment of the State University alongside, 
$135,000; the new Custom House, $350,- 
000; the Rosenberg school, $70,000; the 
Fourth district school, $40,000; the 
Sacred Heart church, $75,000; the cotton 
and woolen mills, $335,000 ; the bagging 
and twine factory, $300,000. In addition 
to these there is projected, new shops for 
the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe railroad, 
for which the citizens have contributed a 
bonus of $50,000, a new rope and twme 
factory and other industrial structures, 



several for wholesale business, and some 
important reconstruction and remodelling 
jobs. A modernized taste is apparent in 
the architecture of all these also. 

It may be safely averred that $3,500,- 
000 has been expended for new buildings, 
public and private, in the last year, and 
that as large a sum total is involved in the 
work now in progress. The disburse- 
ments for building work of the past year 
or two, with which the $450,000 spent for 
water works may be classed, has made 
the building trades and the pursuits and 
industries allied to them flourish cor- 
respondingly, and with an enlivened 
real estate market to stimulate it further 
the future has as encouraging a face. 

The work o£ Architect N. J. Clay- 
ton of Ti-emont and Strand, the first to 
begin practice of this profession in the 
city, is conspicuous among the examples 
of superior architecture that grace the 
streets of Galveston. He planned and 
executed construction of the Tremont and 
Beach hotels, the Masonic Temple, the 
building of the Galveston News., which 
has a decidedly ornate facade, the National 
Bank of Texas or Moody building, the 
Union club, Santa Fe Railroad offices and 
residence of George Sealy. 

He was, until lately, supervising archi- 
tect of the Federal building, which, de- 
signed for a Custom House and Post 
Office, is nearing completion on Bath 
avenue, and he is at present engaged 
on the $23,000 residence of Morris 
Lasker, the new Sacred Heart Church 
of Romanesque type, and the medi- 
cal department of the State Uni- 
versity, a structure complemental to the 
John Sealy hospital. The expenditure 
estimated for these two last named build- 
ings is $75,000 each, and the commissions 
for work entrusted Mr. Clayton now 
aggregate over $250,000. 

Most of the notable buildings of the 
city are illustrated in this work, by engrav- 
ings made from photographs taken for the 



56 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



purpose. Of these the Moody building. 
Sealy residence, Sealy hospital and Cus- 
tom House exhibit Mr. Clayton's experi- 
ence, skill and variety. 

Galveston is favorably situated for 
building operations. It is in a climate 
that permits work to proceed the year 
round ; a climate and a region inviting to 
the laborer, who finds it a place with a 
moderate scale of living expenses, and a 
liberal rate of wages prevailing. It is less 
than a hundred miles from the greatest 
lumber district of the Union, that known 
in Louisiana as the Calcasieu, and in 
Texas as the Sabine region. Brick of 
superior quality is made near it, at Cedar 
Bayou, and other places on the main- 
land. The shipping frequenting the port 
brings cargoes of cement and lime, and 
other materials for house construction, in 
quantities that make a center of distribu- 
tion here, for these commodities. Build- 
ing sites are low priced and the lay of the 
land propitious. There are, as we have 
seen already, in the course of this account 
of the city, several solid local loan and 
homestead associations established, ready 
to provide the property owner of energy 
and enterprise, or the home-builder, with 
funds. 

THE GALVESTON UNDERWRITERS, 

An insurance business particularly large 
for the size of the place, is done at Gal- 
veston, Extraordinary receipts of cotton, 
the most valuable of all the agricultural 
staples, make an aggregate of premiums 
business which is very extensive indeed. 
There are twelve fire insurance agencies at 
Galveston, The most important of these 
are described hereinafter, and with them, 
those also of the life companies doing 
business in the city. 

The premium-receipts of the twelve 
fire agencies, not including cotton policies, 
are between $250,000 and $300,000 a 
year. The rates have been reduced 25 
per cent since the city has provided a 



proper water supply, and this reduction, 
of course, reduces, proportionately, the 
aggregate of premiums. Two business 
firms here carry $1,250,000 insurance on 
their stocks between them, the houses of 
Blum and Willis. Cotton is insured 
mostly, 75 per cent of all received here at 
least, with the marine companies, who 
accept it in transit from the interior by rail 
or barge, in compress or storage yard, on 
the dock and on shipboard, and through 
every stage of its transportation until it 
reaches its final foreign destination. The 
business appears from the records kept, 
exceedingly safe, if not entirely profita- 
ble. During thirty years, says Chief 
Oldenburg of the fire department, the 
losses paid on cotton premium receipts of 
over $3,000,000, have been less than 
$40,000. 

This fact speaks well, too, for the 
efficiency of the city's fire service, the 
status of which, at present, is disclosed in 
the account given of it on page 19 of this 
work. The underwriters have no voice 
in its management except as citizens. 
Neither do they maintain a fire patrol. 
But all the places for storage of cotton 
are protected by special appliances and 
private w\'itchmen. The fire department 
has the assistance of the lighter tugs, 
which are equipped with pumps for the 
purpose, in case of fire in the shipping. 
The new city water supply is considered 
an ample defense against a conflagration, 
such as visited the city in 1SS5, entailing 
a loss to the insurance companies of 
$1,183,000. The city then, however, was 
insufiiciently supplied with water, and 
the flames, impelled by a gale from the 
north, licked up the residences on forty- 
three blocks of ground. 

Since that event, known locally as •' the 
big fire," there have been no extraordi- 
nary losses, although 1SS6, with $114,000 
of total, was a serious period for the com- 
panies. The loss to the insurance com- 
panies in 1887, was $34,000, and in 188S, 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



57 



upon property endangered which was 
vahied at $400,000, and insured for 
$345,928, it was but $5,611. 

Aside from cotton, no merchandise of 
a very inflammable character enters into 
the commerce of the port. There are no 
circumstances now to make the extin- 
guishment of fires especially difficult. 
Storm winds blow over the Island at 
times, but not often. Galveston is largely 
a wooden city, but its streets are wide, 
its grades easy, and its business structures 
are, almost entirely, brick. The fire 
agents are organized as a Board of 
Underwriters for Galveston. There is 
no local insurance company. 

Beers, Kennison & Co., fire and 
marine insurance agents, on Strand be- 
tween Twentieth and Twenty-first streets, 
are the leading underwriters of the city. 
They represent, as general agents, the Sun 
Fire of London, the City of London, the 
Norwich Union, the London & Lancashire 
of Liverpool, the Southern of New Or- 
leans, and the New Orleans Insurance 
Association of New Orleans, and as local 
agents the Lancashire Insurance Co. of 
Manchester, the Queen of Liverpool, the 
Sun of San Francisco, the St. Paul Fire & 
Marine of St. Paul, Minn., and the British 
and Foreign Marine Insurance Co. These 
companies have assets that aggregate for 
the whole, between forty and fifty million 
dollars. 

This agency of Beers, Kennison & Co. 
is an old, as well as solidly established one. 
Mr. Beers has been in the business here 
for twenty years, Mr. Kennison since 1870. 
They divide the details of management, so 
that Mr. Kennison has the general agency 
work to supervise, and Mr. Beers the gen- 
eral management of local and marine 
business. 

It would be difficult to find, in any city, 
a general agency better equipped for its 
business than this ; whether the character 
of the companies represented, the experi- 
ence of the firm, or its reputation in the 



community be taken into consideration, 
or any two of these characteristics, or all 
combined — in any event it is one that will 
easily bear comparison with any in Texas. 

C. E. Angell & Co. (C. E. Angell, 
the "• Co." being nominal merely). Twen- 
ty-first and Mechanic, is the local agent of 
the Liverpool & London & Globe In- 
surance Co., which does a larger business 
and takes heavier risks, when compensated 
for it, than any company doing business in 
the South. He is also the State agent and 
manager for the Greenwich Insurance Co> 
of New York, which has $1,401,000 of 
assets ; for the Hibernia of New Orleans ; 
the Western Home of Sioux City, Iowa ; 
the National Fire Insurance Co. of New 
York ; the Providence Washington Insur- 
ance Co. of Providence, R. I. ; the Mann- 
heim of Germany, and the Sea Insurance 
Co. of England, the last two marine com- 
panies, having respectively $3,064,268 of 
assets and $2,334,716. 

Mr. Angell is a native of the city, and 
one of the most active and energetic of the 
younger generation of business men. He 
bought the agency of M. Quin, Esq. (for 
the London & Liverpool & Globe only), 
from his estate in 1883, and has added the 
other companies since. He does a very 
excellent business, and stands high as an 
underwriter throughout the State. 

J. M. O. Menard, doing busmess as 
J. M. O. Menard & Co., imderwriters. 
Strand, between Twenty-second and 
Twenty-third streets, has been \n the 
insurance business here for 20 years, and 
has been in it on his own account since 
187 1. He is one of the oldest, best 
known and most successful insurance men 
here. He is the general agent for Texas 
of the Trans-Atlantic Fire and New 
York Bowery Companies, is district 
agent in Southwestern Texas for the East 
Texas of Tyler, Tex., and Alamo of San 
Antonio, and is local agent for the German- 
American of New York, the Phenix of 
Brooklyn, the Anglo Nevada of San 



58 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



Francisco and the Alamo Fire of San 
Antonio. These companies have assets, 
aggregating for them all, something like 
$15,000,000. 

Mr. Menard is a native of the city, and 
a relative of Michael B. Menard, the 
founder of Galveston ; is in fact the only 
male representative of the family now 
living here. He has been an Alderman 
of the city. City Assessor and City Treas- 
urer, is a property owner, and a gentleman 
much esteemed for social as well as busi- 
ness qualities. 

James Sorley, Stubbs & Co., gen- 
eral insurance agents, Mechanic street, 
between Twenty-first and Twenty-second, 
over Heidenheimer & Co.'s, are the 
representatives of companies here whose 
aggregated assets are $34,000,000. One of 
them, the Scottish Union and National, 
has $17,^00,000, and another, the Home 
of N. Y., $9,000,000. Besides these 
they act for the Trans-Atlantic of Ham- 
burg, the Connecticut of Hartford, the 
Sun Mutual of New Orleans, the State 
Investment of San Francisco, the Bur- 
lington of Iowa, Greenwich of N. Y. 
and the Fidelity & Casualty Co., security, 
accident and steam boiler insurance, of 
New York. 

Mr. Sorley of the firm, is also the 
agent of the Lloyd's of London, the Liver- 
pool Underwriters' Association and the 
American & Continental Underwriters. 

Mr. Sorley has been a resident here 
since 1851. He has been Collector of 
the Port and an Alderman of the city 
and also a cotton and shipping merchant. 
He has been in the insurance business 
since 1866. He is a gentleman of the 
highest reputation in the community, and 
he has considerable distinction ns a local 
statistician. Mr. Stubbs, the junior part- 
ner in the agency, has been in the busi- 
ness twelve years, and is one of the best 
qualified of the local underwriters. He 
is a native of the city, and has been a 
partner with Mr. Sorley for about a year. 



C. M. GuiNARD & Co.. insurance 
agents, Reymershoffer building. 2203 
Mechanic street (C. M. Guinard. the Co. 
being nominal), is the representative here 
of the following companies : The Con- 
tinental of New York, which has $5,- 
177,000 of assets ; the Fire Association of 
Philadelphia, $4,250,000; the Norwich 
Union, $4,000,000 ; the Western of 
Toronto, $1,975,000; the British America 
of Canada, $1,800,000; the Marine of St. 
Louis and Commercial Insurance Co. of 
California. He is special Texas agent 
for the Continental and also agent for the 
Travelers Life & Accident Co. of Hart- 
ford, having $8,000,000 assets, and the 
American Surety Co., $1,950,000. 

The character of the fire companies for 
whom he acts is best illustrated by the fact 
that they paid $145,000 in cash, without 
discount, for the losses they sustained by 
the great fire here on Nov. 13th. 1885. 
Mr. Guinard is one of the oldest of the 
local underwriters, and he has been one 
of the most successful of them. He has 
large lines of insurance entrusted him by 
the business men of the city. He was 
secretary of the Merchants' Insurance Co. 
of Galveston while it was in business. 
He is a director of the Peoples' Loan & 
Homestead Association and president of 
the Neptune Ice Company, and is inter- 
ested also in the Galveston Cotton & 
Woolen Mills. He has been an officer of 
the local board of Fire Underwriters for 
the last eight years, and has been in the 
insurance business here for twenty-four 
years. 

The Equitable Life Assuranxe So- 
ciETV of the United States, which is rep- 
resented here by Ladd M. Waters & Bro., 
its Texas and Arkansas agents, exceeds 
every other life company of the world in 
the following particulars : For four years 
it has had the largest outstanding assur- 
ance ; for ten years the largest 4 per cent 
surplus, and for ten years also, has exhib- 
ited the largest annual new business. 



60 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



Its ratio of assets to liabilities is i2Sper 
cent. Its record, during the thirty 
years it has been established, discloses a 
business in excess of that of nearly thirty 
companies established meanwhile in the 
United States combined ; in excess of the 
thirty leading British companies in recent 
years, and nearly twice as much as the 
current business of the eighteen leading 
French companies ; and the like compari- 
son made with respect to the most promi- 
nent German companies, is also a revela- 
tion of the superiority of the Equitable. 

The Equitable has been foremost also 
in biinging about reforms in the methods 
of life insurance. It was the first to intro- 
duce Tontine assurance, the most popular 
plan of the day in this country. It origi- 
nated indisputable insurance in the United 
States and voluntarily adopted the incon- 
testable policy clause, evincing in the 
celebrated Dwight case, contested by 
nineteen other companies, but promptly 
settled by it. its adherence to a principle 
of its own establishment. Credit is due 
also to the Equitable for the free Tontine 
policy which gives absolute liberty to its 
policy holder to pursue any course in life 
best pleases him in one year, and an un- 
conditional claim in two years. 

The Equitable's newest form of policy 
is a simple promise to pay, like a bank draft, 
with no conditions whatever on the back 
of it. It is unrestricted as to travel and 
occupation after one year, incontestable 
after two years, non-forfeitable after three 
years, is payable immediately it matures, 
draws tontine profits, and gives the pos- 
sessor of it a choice of six methods of set- 
tlement at the end of the tontine period. 

The Equitable is distinguished also 
among the life companies by the substan- 
tial character of its assets, and by the 
enterprise it has exhibited in giving them 
a permanent value. Its building in New 
York city is considered the finest exam- 
ple of a structure devoted to business 
purposes in the great metropolis ; and it 



has raised in Vienna. Berlin and Madrid, 
massive architectural piles that are notable 
even in those great Old World capitals. 

The agents here readily obtain business 
for a company of such resources. Several 
policies for $50,000 and upwards have 
been written by them here for leading 
citizens. Mr. Ladd M. Waters has been 
in the li:^ insurance business for several 
years here. He is a native of the city and 
well known among the business commu- 
nities, not of Galveston and its vicinity 
alone, but of all the territoi-y allotted his 
firm by the company. His brother and 
partner, Mr. W. M. Waters, is stationed 
at Dallas, and is in charge of their agency 
affairs there The Galveston office of 
this firm is on Strand near Twenty-second 
street. 

The Mutual Reserve Fund Life 
Association of New York is doing a 
beneficent work in Texas. Having es- 
tablished agencies throughout the State, 
with representative men in charge, it 
deserves mention here. 

This association has achieved the 
grandest success ever known in life in- 
surance business. Although only organ- 
ized in 18S1, it had, at the close of the 
year 1889, the amount of over $181,000,- 
000 of Insurance in force, had paid 
death claims amounting to over $7,600,- 
000 (of which over $1, 800,000 was paid 
in 1SS9) and had accumulated a Reserve 
Fund of over $3,300,000 for the protec- 
tion of all its policies. 

In these first nine years of its existence 
the Association has done the largest 
business ever done by any Life Insurance 
Company in the same time ; and compar- 
ing its business with the three largest 
companies in the world, it is three times 
as much as the Equitable, more than 
seventeen times as much as the Mutual and 
more than twenty times as much as the 
New York Life Insurance Co. 

It has, in fact, effected a revolution in 
Life Insurance and has proved that it can 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



61 



be furnished, when relieved from the heavy 
investment features of the old system, at 
a cost which is within the reach of all, thus 
allowing a workingman to pi'ovide for his 
family where formerlv he could not do so 
on account of the high cost. 

The Natural Premium system, under 
which the Mutual Reserve is operated, 
furnishes Life Insurance at the lowest 
possible cost, with perfect security, and is 
the result of practical experience, which 
has been utilized in perfecting the system. 
This system of Life Insurance is espec- 
ially a benefit to the citizens of Texas as 
it calls on them to pay only the net cost, 
and leaves their capital in their own 
hands for use in their own business, thus 
benefiting the entire community, directly 
and indirectly, instead of drawing large 
amounts from the State annually, to be 
invested in other States, as is the case 
under the old system. 

The Mutual Reserve is now the peer of 
any company in the world and as its 
management has been investigated over 
a score of times, by the legal authorities 
of as many States, without once meeting 
with aught but commendation, it is one of 
the recognized institutions of the country, 
and its motto, "not for a day, but for all 
time," is a most appropriate one. 

The Mutual Reserve is the only Com- 
pany which has protected its accumula- 
tions by placing them in trust and 
removing them from the absolute control 
of its officers. This it has done by placing 
its Reserve Fund under a Deed of Trust, 
which is the best known protection, and 
furnishes the best security a policy- 
holder can have, with the great Central 
Trust Co. of New York, which has assets 
of over $25,000,000. 

The cost of Insurance in the Mutual 
Reserve, for each $1,000 annually, is at 
the age of 35, $13.76; age 30, $14.34; age 
40, $16.17 ; ^g^ 5°' $21-37, and at the age 
of 60, $43.70, or about one-half the rates 
of the old system, and this cost is divided 



into bi-monthly payments, ranging from 
$i.So at age 35 to $6.78 at age 60 every 
two months, thus making the payment so 
small that every one may participate in its 
benefits. 

As Life Insurance is acknowledged to 
be the best protection a man can give his 
family, and as the Mutual Reserve fur- 
nishes it at the lowest possible cost, with 
security, those desiring to protect their 
families should consult some representa- 
tive of the Association and learn the full 
particulars of its system ; and this step 
can hardly be taken too soon. 

The operations of this Association 
have been rapidly extended, and it is now 
doing business throughout the United 
States, Canada, Great Britain, France and 
Continental Europe. 

The Association is doing a large busi- 
ness in Texas, and Mr. E. B, Harper, its 
energetic president, is to be congratulated 
on having secured the co-operation of 
an efficient corps of representatives in the 
State. Mr. A. C. Bloss, Manager of the 
Central Department, which includes 
Texas, has been identified with the Asso- 
ciation since its first year, and has placed 
many millions of business on its books ; 
he is a most indefatigable worker, and 
keeps his department in the front rank of 
State agencies. Mr. R. T. Byrne of 
Galveston is the General Agent of the 
Association for Galveston, Houston and 
Southeastern Texas, and has already made 
a reputation for the Association in his 
section, wherein he is doing a very large 
business 

Messrs. P. S. & J. P. Pfouts (Pfouts & 
Pfouts) of Dallas, General Agents for 
Northeastern Texas, are live business men 
and are meeting with deserved success 
and securing their full share of business. 
Messrs. Warner & Raymond, of Austin, 
are General Agents for Austin and vicin- 
ity, and their well-known reputation as 
business men guaranteed their success 
from the start. Mr. L. B. Morrison, of 



62 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



Gatesville. General Agent for several 
counties in his vicinity, is crowding other 
companies, and lets no one get ahead of 
him. Mr. F. B. Bailey of Palestine, has 
several counties under his charge as Gen- 
eral Agent, has incited great interest 
in Life Insurance, and gets plenty of 
business in his territory. Mr. W. F. 
Beard of Cleburne, is also an active 
worker and has secured also a large 
business. Mr. J. J. McDaniel of Mine- 
ola, another General Agent, has already 
made a record and will doubtless keep 



it up. General John M. Claiborn, now 
located at Rusk, is one of the latest 
appointees, and those who know him 
say, that he will do his full share in 
introducing the Association in his vi- 
cinity. 

These General Agents have many able 
assistants, and as Texans always show 
their appreciation of a good thing when 
they see it. and as the iSIutual Reserve is 
undoubtedly "'a vei-y good thing indeed," 
its great success is readily accounted 
for. 







MARITIME BUSINESS AND FOREIGN TRADE. 




j^^gsINCE iSSo, Galveston has 
isen to the rank of 
seventh seaport of the 
country, and has sustained 
her title to maritime pres- 
tige over all the cities of 
the Union except New 
York, San Francisco, Boston, New Or- 
leans, Baltimore and Philadelphia, by 
the number of her home fleet and coast- 
wise and transient arrivals, and by her 
customs and wharf collections. 

The vessels owned and documented 
in the Galveston customs district number 
nearly 2<X). Their gross tonnage is over 
8,000. The entries of coastwise vessels are 
now between 300 and 400 a year ; the ton- 
nage of them, about 350,000. Clearances 
are approximately the same. The entries, 
foreign, are 375 steamships and 130 sail, 
and the tonnage about the same as that of 
the coasting aggregate. Clearances for- 
eign, likewise approach the coasting fig- 
ures. Sea freights aggregate, therefore, 
700,000 tons in, and about as much out of 
the port of Galveston. This statement 
does not include the small craft carrying 
produce, lumber, etc., and plying in and 
out of the port, and into adjacent coast 
waters. 

As cotton is the staple chiefly freighted, 
the customs statistics vary from year 
to year, according as the demand for it 
is greater at home or abroad. The state- 



ment of the exports and imports of the 
city that follows, furnished by N. W. 
CuNEY, collector of the port, is a measure, 
however, of its foreign trade. 

The total value of the imports of Gal- 
veston in 18S6 was $1,059,835. In 1887, 
it was $1,694,676. In i888, it was $1,- 
740,606. To July I, 1889, $970,000. 
The total exports of 1886 were valued at 
$16,955,801 ; of 1887, $18,819,493, and of 
1888, $14,462,947. The noticeable dif- 
ference in these two years was due, not to 
any decreased business of the port, but 
simply to the fact that the railroads built 
into Mexico, diverted a considerable traffic 
that formerly went south from Galveston 
by sea. The statement of exports too, 
does not include the whole movement of 
cotton to European ports ; for within the 
last few years the shipments from Gal- 
veston abroad by way of New York have 
largely increased. 

A comparison of the imports of 1888 
with those of the first half of '89, the 
latest figures obtainable, shows an in- 
creasing business of the port in nearly 
every leading item. The total importa- 
tions of cement in '88, were valued at 
$19,548. In the first half of last year 
they were $12,531. The imports of coal 
and coke in '88 were $56,809, as com- 
pared with $31,728 in the first half of '89, 
and similar comparisons in the case of 
coffee show figures of $401,768 and 



,^ 



64 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



$300,943 respectively; cotton ties, $95,- 
382 and $64,934; dry goods, $244,713 
and $114,720; hardware, $472,294 and 
$264,068; salt, $37,457 and $17,000; 
wines and liquors, $56,760 and $33,694; 
sundries, $355,465 and $128,501. This 
same relative rate of increase would in- 
dicate imports of $1,945,230 in 1889, the 
principal items being, coffee, $601,886; 
drv goods, $238,440 ; hardware, $528,126. 

The exports are little else than cotton 
and cotton oil cake. Three to four 
hundred thousand bales of cotton are ex- 
ported foreign direct ; the remainder via 
New York, and about 30,000 tons of oil 
cake is also loaded at the Galveston 
wharves. The item of sundry exports 
has varied in thi-ee years from $50,000 in 
value to $150,000. 

The customs figures show a growing 
trade in the dye wood known as fustic, a 
product of the Central American States ; 
also in alligator skins from the tropics. 
But the greatest increase of imports is in 
Mexican coffees. A year or two ago, an 
effort was made by houses interested in 
the trade, to increase the importation of 
English tin-plate for St. Louis, Kansas 
City and other Western markets, but 
damage resulting from lighterage forced 
the parties concerned to abandon the 
undertaking. All this new business, like 
the proposed shipment of Texas beef in 
special refrigerator steamers, and the de- 
velopment of a foreign grain trade, which 
was inaugurated by F. Cannon and 
others, assisted by the Santa Fe road, 
with the shipment of 32,000 bushels of 
Kansas corn in May last, depends largely 
upon the government's impi'ovement of 
the bar to the harbor, although local 
enterprise is actively enlisted to prosecute 
these projects with only the present facil- 
ities of the port. 

BAY, CHANNEL AND BAR. 

Its natural conformation divides the 
Bay of Galveston into two parts, the 



Upper Bay, enclosed entirely within the 
mainland, and serviceable chiefly as a 
means of internal transportation, and the 
Lower or West Bay — Galveston Bay 
proper — between the island and the main- 
land opposite it, which affords a safe and 
commodious harbor for the shipping of 
the port. The Upper Bay extends a 
distance of thirty miles from the entrance, 
and is about thirty-five miles across in its 
widest parts. It is ten or eleven feet 
deep over about a fourth of it, and has a 
ship channel excavated for eighteen miles 
through it to Buffalo bayou, on the banks 
of which Houston is situated, about fifty 
miles by rail from Galveston. The 
Trinity, one of the principal rivei's of 
Eastern Texas, debouches into this Upper 
Bay at one of its furthest Northern ex- 
tremities. 

The Lower Bay is one and a half to 
two miles wide. It covei's an area of 135 
miles. No point in it is more than twelve 
miles from the main entrance, for there 
are two, one to the West at San Luis 
pass, which has not been in use, even by 
small craft, for years, and the other, an 
opening from the Gulf into both Lower 
and Upper Bays, between the eastern end 
of the island and Bolivar Peninsula. 
Just inside this entrance there are two 
channels, divided by a shoal. One leads 
to the Upper Bay, and the other sweeps 
past the city into the Lower Bay and 
forms the harbor of Galveston. It is 
about 200 hundred yards wide, and has 
an average depth in front of the city of 
thirty feet. The gorge of this entrance 
to the harbor is about 8,200 feet wide. 
The harbor has 460 acres of 30 foot 
anchorage inside this gorge, and 1,300 
acres of 24 foot depth, 500 acres of 
which, however, lie outside the gorge. 

Two bars, an inner and an outer bar, 
obstruct this entrance to the harbor. The 
inner bar has twenty-one feet of water 
upon it at mean low tide, the outer 
thirteen and a quarter. This is an in- 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



65 



crease of twelve feet in the former since 
1S67, three feet of which was added by 
the forces of Nature and nine by the ex- 
penditure of municipal moneys, and this 
depth can be indefinitely increased should 
removal of the outer bar require it. That 
had twelve and a quarter feet when the 
government improvements, now in prog- 
ress, were commenced, so that already a 



The outer bar lies four miles seaward 
beyond the gorge. The project of the 
government engineers is siinply the con- 
struction of jetties rising five feet above 
high tide, parallel or nearly so at a dis- 
tance of a mile and a half apart, for the 
length of 54,000 feet. One has been 
constructed already to the length of i6,- 
000 feet. The conditions being dissimi- 




COAL AND ICE WHARF 



foot of depth has been secured upon it, 
which, little as it seems, is a matter of 
vast importance to the commerce of the 
port, not only as an extra accommodation 
for its shipping, but as a showing also, of 
what can be done, by continuing the work. 
A vessel of 1,767 tons register crossed 
this outer bar last fall without lightering 
at all, and on January 6, last, the steam- 
ship Marchioness, drawing fifteen feet six 
inches of water, passed over. 



lar, these jetties are somewhat unlike 
those at the mouth of the Mississippi, 
with which they have sometimes been 
compared, but the principle of construc- 
tion is much the same. The amount 
already expended on them is $800,000 ; 
the amount necessary to give a 30 foot 
depth of water on the bar is $2,200,000, 
and 30 feet, $6,300,000 ; and this is the 
sum appropriated for the work in the bill 
which has passed the U. S. Senate and 



66 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



is now pending in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, with excellent prospects of 
passage. The bill provides for the ex- 
penditure of $1,000,000 a year on the 
work, so that in two or three years, if the 




bill passes, Galveston would be a port of 
the second class — one with 20 feet depth 
at its entrance — and in six years a port of 
the first class, or one with 30 feet or 
more of depth at the bar. 

WHARF AND LIGHTER FACILITIES. 

There are eight pilots licensed for 
Galveston. They have two boats in 
service, a steamer and a sailing craft. 
The lighterage and towing facilities of 
the port are also ample. There are two 
companies embarked in this business and 
operated in conjunction. 

The depth of water over the bar not 
permitting large vessels, heavily laden, to 
enter the harbor. The Galveston 
Steamship & Lighter Co. was organ- 
ized in 1880, by its present principals, for 
the purpose of providing adequate light- 
erage and towing facilities for the shipping 
frequenting this port. Messrs. Adoue & 
Lobit, the bankers, T. Wm. English, 
engaged in the coal and iron trade and 
also a principal in the new bagging fac- 
tory here, and Capt. J. Moller of J. Mol- 



ler & Co., ship brokers, organized the 
company. Mr. English is president of it 
now, Mr, W. L. Moody, cotton factor 
and banker, vice-president and ^Ir. Adoue 
general manager. The office of the com- 
pany is at No. I Kuhn's Wharf. 

The company now has a capital stock 
of $80,000. It has in service four steam 
lighters and one steam tug. Any of these 
craft can be used as towboats, and in 
fact, they are in frequent use to fetch sail- 
ing vessels from the outside anchorage 
ground to the wharves. Their most com- 
mon and greatest utility as a port facility 
is however, to give extra dispatch to the 
loading of vessels drawing more water 
than is on the bar. They enable the com- 
pany, with a sufiicient force of hands 
(which sometimes numbers 125 to 150), 
to handle 7,000 bales in 24 hours, that is, 
to transport that much cotton from the 
wharf to the vessel in anchorage, and load 
it aboard of her. 

The gentlemen who have put their cap- 
ital into this maritime convenience are 
interested in other enterprises which have 
full exposition under appropriate classifi- 
cations of this work and which need not 
therefore be minutely referred to here. 

Fourteen to fifteen feet draft, 
we have seen, is about the limit for 
vessels crossing the bar, and thirty 
feet, as has been said, is the depth in 
the stream. A depth of about fifteen 
feet is maintained at the w-harves by 
dredging. The wharf frontage now, 
is about two and a half miles. There 
is a sufficient area of tidal basin avail- 
able for its extension to meet the de- 
mands of the future. The wharves are 
owned by a corporation in which the city 
has a third interest. The earnings of this^ 
corporation, about four per cent per 
annum on its capitalization of $2,636,000, 
indicate a moderate scale of wharfage 
rates. 

Port charges of all kinds, it is claimed 
for the city, are reasonable in comparison 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



67 



vvith those prevailing at other places. 
The facilities of the port for loading and 
discharging and general stevedoring, and 
for refitting and victualling ships, are of 
the most comprehensive character. The 
wharf company maintains a wharf-rail- 
way, for the transfer of freights from the 
railroads to shipping, and vice versa, and 
also marine ways. 

Sweeney & Co., stevedores, Twenty- 
first street between Strand and Mechanic, 
apply themselves exclusively to the load- 
ing of cotton and cotton seed products and 
do half of the work of that kind done at 
this port. They employ during- the cot- 
ton season, an average of twenty-five 
gangs of screwmen, of five men to a gang, 
besides other laborers to the number of 
350, all told, a force indicating the very 
large business they do here. 

The partners in this firm are C. C. 
Sweeney, Thos. W. Kirk and Geo. W. 
Sweeney, a son of the senior member. 
Mr. C. C. Sweeney established the busi- 
ness before the war, and was of course 
obliged to discontinue it during that 
eventful era for Galveston, but he re-es- 



Sweeney could devote his attention to the 
duties of office. His term having ex- 
pired he resumed his place as general 
manager. 

Mr. C. C. Sweeney has also been Com- 
missioner of Immigration for Texas and a 
Pilot Commissioner for Galveston. Mr. 
Kirk has been a resident of Galveston 
since 1S66, and has followed the steve- 
doring business ever since he came here. 
Mr. Geo. W. Sweeney is a native of the 
city and is the office man of the firm. 

Charles Clarke & Co., stevedores 
and contractors, corner of Center street 
and Strand, are engaged as stevedores 
discharging and loading other freights 
than cotton, and have the bulk of the 
miscellaneous business of that character 
here. They buy and sell ballast, furnish 
steam engiaes and hoisting horses for a 
reasonable compensation, to do any class 
of work, on or off the docks, and make a 
specialty of submarine diving. 

As contractors, they are chiefly engaged 
on government work. They had a 
$100,000 contract last year for removing 
the bar at Aransas Pass, and have recently 




BOAT LANDING. 

tablished it in 1S65, and continued it until finished supplying rock for the jetty work 

m 18S4, he was appointed Collector of the at the mouth of the Brazos, a $.7 .00 

Port by Resident Cleveland. Mr. Kirk contract with private parties engaged in 

and Geo. W. Sweeney, his son, then took that engineering enterprise. They have 

charge of the business, so that Mr. also recently contracted with the Brazos 



68 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 




&• COM 1 'ANY 



AGKMS. LOADING STEAMER WITH COTTON. 



Canal Co. to supply it with $78,000 or 
more of rock and they are prepared to 
enter into contracts for supplying rock to 
the extent of from 500 to 1,000 tons daily. 
They have, employed altogether, some 250 
or 300 men, and their facilities comprise, 
besides ample capital, a steam towboat, 
six lighters, and fifteen steam hoisting 
engines. 

Mr. Chas. Clarke has been a stevedore 
and contractor of Galveston since 1S65. 
His partner is Mr. Robt. P. Clarke, who 
came here from Massachusetts in 1SS3 and 
became a partner with Mr. Clarke in 
18S8. 

FOREIGN STEAMSHIP LINES. 

Many steamers of the class known as 
" tramps " seek Galveston for cotton 
freights in the fall and winter months. 



They are somewhat irregular in the matter 
of arrival and departure, but the number 
of them increases every season, over the 
one preceding. 

J. MoLLER & Co., ship brokers, sail 
and steamship agents, importers of coal, 
coke, salt, etc.. Strand, between Twen- 
tieth and Twenty-first streets, do an extra- 
ordinary business. As ship agents they 
are exporters of 250,000 to 300,000 bales 
of cotton a year and 15,000 tons of oil 
cake ; and as coal dealers they import 
20,000 tons in the same time. They ship- 
ped, August 30th last, the first cotton 
cargo of the past season, 3,390 bales, 
to Liverpool, by the steamer '' Ame- 
thyst." 

They are the agents here for the "Texas- 
European" Steamship Line, plying be- 
tween Galveston, and Liverpool, Havre 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



69 



and Bremen, and for the " Black Star" 
steamship line, running from Galveston to 
Liverpool, and they are the consignees of 
numerous sailing vessels that frequent 
this port. They have business enough to 
employ one hundred men on the wharves 
and are largely interested besides in the 
Galveston Steamship & Lighterage Com- 
pany, of which one of the firm is secre- 
tary. 

Capt. Moller is the vice-consul also of 
Denmark and of Russia here, with juris- 
diction over the territory comprised by 
Texas, Indian Territory, New Mexico 
and Arizona. He was formerly a ship- 
master, but has been engaged In these 
lines here since 1S79. His partner, Mr. 
Thos. H. Sweeney, has been a resident 
of Galveston since 1S68. He was for- 
merly engaged as a stevedore here in com- 



pany with his brother, Chas. Sweeney, 
lately Collector of the Port. Mr. Sweeney 
himself has been an Alderman of the 
city, and is considered a remarkably ener- 
getic man in mercantile and maritime 
affairs. Both he and Capt. Moller have 
important investments in enterprises of 
that character, among the rest are in the 
coal business as L. C. Leith & Co., Dar- 
ragh's Wharf. 

L. C. Leith & Co., importers of for- 
eign and wholesale dealers in domestic 
coals, cements, coke, etc., have been three 
years established and have trade through- 
out Texas. The business of this house 
is an outgrowth from that of J. Moller & 
' Co., ship agents of this city, sole propri- 
etors of it, a firm whose large impor- 
tations requiring division of manage- 
ment and separation of interests, a new 




SCENE ON A COTTON DOCK. 



JO 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



partnership was formed ; and this branch 
of their business was placed under the 
direction of Capt. Leith, formerly a ship- 
master, but a resident here since 1881. 

The firm of L. C. Leith & Co. does 
some retail business, but is chiefly engaged 
as a wholesale dealer in steam, house and 
blacksmiths' coal, English patent coke, 
English and German Portland cement 
and salt. Some 20,000 tons of coal were 
handled by it last year and two cargoes 
of salt. Vessels consigned to J. ISIoller & 
Co. discharge at Leitla & Co.'s place on 



touching en ro2ite at Key West, Florida, 
and the same number returning. It has 
three steamers engaged also in a New 
York and Florida line, and ten boats in 
service altogether, iron steamships, espec- 
ially constructed for the GuTf trade, and 
commanded by the following experienced 
masters: The " Leona, " a new boat of 
3,^00 tons measurement, Capt. Bolger ; the 
"Nueces, " Capt. S. Risk, 3,367 tons ; the 
"Comal,'- Capt. J. Risk, 2,950;" the 
"Lampasas," Crowell, master, 2,942; 
the " Alamo, " Lewis, 2,942; the " vSan 




l.lNh MK.vMSlIIP AT SEA. 



Darragh's Wharf, immediately on the 
water front, where rail and ship meet. 
The shipping facilities of the house ax'e 
therefore unsurpassed here, and rates can 
be given to all parts of Texas as low as 
it is possible to get them. 

NEW YORK STEAMSHIP LINES. 

The ISLvllorv Line, or New York and 
Texas Steamship Co., runs three steamers 
a week out of Galveston for New York, 



Marcos," Burrows, 2,840; the "Colo- 
rado, " Evans, 2,764 ; the " Rio Grande, " 
Conners, 2,656; the " State of Texas, " 
Williams, 1,696, and the "City of 
San Antonio, " Wilder, 1,652. 

These vessels carry both freight and 
passengers, and are thoroughly appointed 
for passenger business. They are speed- 
ier than the special freight carriers. They 
make the trip of nearly 2,000 miles along 
the Southern coast in six or seven days, 
have large and airy state rooms, accom- 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



71 



tnodating two, bath and smoking rooms, 
and meals served as well as in the best 
hotels. The steerage accommodations 
are also superior. Through tickets can 
be secured in New York via this line to 
all points in Mexico, Texas, the South- 
western territories and California, and 
vice versa^ at rates which are a consider- 
able reduction on all rail fares ; and 
excursion i-ates are made every season. 
The travel during the summer months is 
large between Galveston and New York 
and in the fall lively the other way. 

The steamers of this line get over Gal- 
veston bar loaded with 4,500 to 5,000 
bales of cotton at 13^ feet draft. Freights 
to New York from here are chiefly cotton 
and cotton seed oil, sugar, wool, mo- 
lasses and ixtle or Mexican hemp. 
About 150 hands are employed on the 
Mallory dock here. Large cargoes of 
general merchandise are carried usually 
between New York and Galveston. 
Business, stimulated by the general pros- 
perity of Texas and the growth of rail- 
road traffic, in which this line participates, 
is rapidly increasing. The line is 
independent of railroad influences, but 
connects with all that focus here, and also 
at New York with the steamers for for- 
eign ports. 

The Mallory line has been established 
about 20 years. C. H. Mallory & Co. 
are New York agents and managers of 
the line. C. H. Mallory is president of 
the company operating it ; E, Spicer, vice- 
president ; H.' R. Mallory, treasurer ; 
Wm. Mason, secretary ; Chas. and Robert 
Mallory, directors. These officials are 
all located at New York. The agents of 
the company here are J. N. Sawyer & 
Co., Strand near Twenty-fourth street. 
Capt. Sawyer inaugurated the Mallory 
service by bringing the first boat here, 
and soon after he had done so settled 
here as its agent. He has been its repre- 
sentative here ever since, and has handled 
the important interests involved with ex- 



cellent tact and judgment. Mr. Hamp- 
ton Young has been associated with him 
for about 13 years. He supervises the 
office details. 

The Morgan Line, or to be more 
exact, Morgan's Louisiana & Texas Rail- 
road and Steamship Company, derives its 
name from Chas. Morgan, a capitalist of 
New York, New Orleans and Galveston, 
who was among the first to perceive the 
rising importance of Galveston as a sea- 
port, and who established a line of steam- 
ers from New York to New Orleans and 
this city, so long ago as 1S45. The exigen- 
cies of the service developed, finally, the 
railroad feature of this company's business, 
a line from Morgan City on the Louisi-- 
ana coast, to New Orleans, affording a 
more direct means of communication 
than the river and sea passage from the 
Crescent to the Oleander city. Some 
years ago the Southern Pacific Railroad 
Company purchased the Morgan interests 
and has since operated the steamship line 
as a subordinate, but independent organ- 
ization, of which the president and gen- 
eral manager is Mr. A. C. Hutchins, the 
Southern Pacific agent at New Orleans. 

The Morgan Company is capitalized 
at $10,000,000, and besides the railroad, 
owns and operates a fleet of ten steam- 
ers, several coasters, and the auxiliary 
Houston barge line of the Houston Direct 
Navigation Co. The steamers of the 
line, the " Chalmette," "Lone Star," 
"El Monte," "Excelsior," "Algiers," 
" Eureka," " El Paso," " New York ' 
and •• El Dorado " are employed in the 
trade between New York and New 
Orleans and Galveston ; also in trips from 
New Orleans to Key West and Havana 
and to the ports on the Texas and Mexi- 
can Gulf coast from both New Orleans 
and Galveston. They are freight carriers 
chiefly, but they have accommodations 
also for passengers. 

The New Orleans and New York line 
has two steamers sailing from each port 



72 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



weekly, the Galveston line one. The 
largest vessels of the line are on the New 
York and New Orleans route. From 
New York to Galveston by the Morgan 
line, is 1,850 miles. This distance is 
made in seven days. No passengers are 
carried on the New York lines, but they 
are taken for the passage between New 
Orleans, Charlotte's Harbor, Key West 
and Havana, a distance of 800 miles, or 
a three days' trip. 

Steamers of this latter route leave New 
Orleans every Wednesday. Between New 
Orleans and Brazos Santiago, they run 
three times a month, and between New 
Orleans and Vera Cruz twice a month, 
touching at Galveston both ways. They 
thus leave Galveston for Brazos Santiago 
every ten days and for Vera Cruz the 
''Harlan" sails the 2d and 17th of each 
month and arrives home the nth and 26th. 
The Coast line runs only from November 
I to May I, the New York and New 
Orleans line, however, the year round. 

Freights are taken at New York for 
delivery at New Orleans, Mobile, all 
Mississippi river points, Galveston, Hous- 
ton, Indianola, Corpus Christi, Brazos 
Santiago, Brownsville, all Texas interior 
points, and also freight destined for 
Old and New Mexico, Arizona and 
California. General merchandise, heavy 
freights particularly, make the bulk of the 
cargoes brought this way ; cotton, for 
which the New Orleans steamers have a 
carrying capacity of 10.000 bales and the 
Galveston steamers 4,600 bales each, is, 
with sugar, molasses, cotton seed oil, wool 
and hides, the principal item of traffic 
eastward-bound. The general business 
of the line is increasing. It is accelerated 
considerably by the growth of the South- 
ern Pacific Railroad system and its con- 
nections, of which, as has been said, the 
Morgan Line is part. 

The Houston Direct Navigation 
Co., an adjunct of the Morgan Line and 
Southern Pacific, owns six towboats and 



twenty barges plying between here and 
Houston, on Galveston Bay and Buffalo 
Bayou. During the season September i 
to May I, a tug towing five barges makes 
daily trips.. They bring from Houston 
cotton and cotton oil, cake, seed, etc., and 
return with general merchandise. The 
facilities are equal to a traffic of 15,000 
bales a day. Other tugs owned by this 
same company are used for towage and 
barge service in this harbor. 

The two enterprises, the steamship 
line and the Houston company, employ 
during the cotton season, here and at 
Houston, several hundred hands. About 
200 laborers are engaged at the company's 
dock here, and as many more at the 
Bayou city. The vice-president, secre- 
tary and treasui-er. and superintendent of 
the barge company are located at Hous- 
ton where connection is made with the 
Southern Pacific. The local superintend- 
ent is L. P. Dignan. 

Both companies have their landing here 
at Central Wharf. Capt. Chas. Fowler 
is manager for the Morgan Line and pres- 
ident of the Navigation Co, Capt. Fow- 
ler has been an Alderman of the city for 
the last five years and a Pilot Commission- 
er of the State for twenty. He is chairman 
of the Building Committee of the John 
Sealy Hospital, a local benefaction, is 
president of the Texas Ice Co., and a 
director of the Plouston & Texas Central 
Railway. He has been with the Morgan 
Line for thirty-four years, for ten years 
as master of steamships, and for twenty- 
four as its Galveston agent. He is a man 
of property and influence ; and his resi- 
dence is one of the finest in the fashiona- 
ble quarter of the city. A cut of it em- 
bellishes page 13 of this work. 

The Galveston and Brazos Na\i- 
GATioN Company has two steamers of 
light draft in the coast and river trade of 
Galveston. These ply chiefly up the 
Brazos river into "the Sugar Bowl of 
Texas." 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



73 



SHIP CHANDI.ERS AND GROCERS. 

H. Marwitz & Co., ship chandlers, 
grocers and liquor dealers, corner of 
Mechanic and Twenty-second streets, 
carry a $50,000 stock, and have both a 
city and State trade. The bulk of the 
business of the house is, however, with 
the shipping frequenting the port, and to 
supply that trade a very large and miscel- 
laneous stock of rope of all kinds, and 
hawsers, duck, oars, anchors, chains, 
blocks, naval and engineers' stores, and 
ship's hardware is carried by it. Among 
other agencies the following are held by 
it: For Walter Coleman & Son's blocks 
and sheaves ; Leonard & Ellis' valvoline 
oils ; Henry N. Stone's Edson's patent 
diaphragm free pumps, and the Revere 
Copper Company's yellow metal. Pro- 
visions and ship stores make also a large 
part of its stock. 

The "Co." of the firm name is nominal 
merely. Mr. Marwitz, who founded the 
house in i860, is sole proprietor. He has 
been a resident here since 1851, and is 
one of the best known and most substan- 
tial citizens of Galveston. He is a direc- 
tor of the Island City Savings Bank and 
the Texas Cotton Press Co., is a stock- 
holder in numerous other enterprises here 
and is a large property owner. He has, 
therefore, ample resources for his busi- 
ness. 

T. L. Cross & Co., ship chandlers, 
manufacturers' agents and commission 
merchants, corner of Center street and 
Strand, is the firm name adopted by Mr. 
Cross, formerly of Schneider & Cross, 
grocers and ship chandlers, for the busi- 
ness he has been pursuing by himself since 
June, 1889, Schneider & Cross dissolved 
and divided their trade, Mr. S. taking the 
grocery department, and Mr. Cross, be- 
lieving Galveston sufficiently large to 
justify it, the ship chandlery department 
of the old firm's business. He is the only 
person engaged exclusively in ship chand- 



lery here ; the other Galveston houses of 
that line all do a grocery business also. 

He is agent for the Boston & Lockport 
Block Company, and handles all the pro- 
ductions of that concern sold here ; for W. 
J. Woolsey, Jersey City, copper paints, 
and Q. S. Backus, of Middletown, Conn., 
braces. When the Westbrook Manufac- 
turing Company recently withdrew its 
agencies from the Southern ports. New 
Orleans excepted, he bought all its stock 
of duck, and is carrying a larger line of it 
than anybody here. He has a $15,000 
stock and is doing already about three 
times that much business a year. 

Mr. Cross has been a resident here since 
1859, and a business man of Galveston 
ever since the war. He is a notary public, 
with considerable maritime patronage, 

Capt. C. Nicolini, grocer, ship chand- 
ler and importer of wines and liquors, 
tobacco and cigars, corner of Strand and 
Twentieth street, has been a resident here 
for the last six years. Having spent a 
long period of his life as master of an 
Italian merchantman, he is well adapted 
for a trade that brings him into relations 
with persons of the maritime professions. 
He handles groceries at wholesale and 
retail, and does both a State and city trade 
in them. 

In the liquor business, which is run as 
a separate department, he has his brother 
for a partner. In this line they handle, 
besides imported goods of all kinds, the 
finest of Kentucky whiskies, and are in 
regular receipt of consignments of Cali- 
fornia wines direct from the districts of the 
Golden State in which they are produced. 

Capt. Nicolini has visited, in the course 
of his vocation as a seaman, the greater 
part of the known world, and has spent a 
considerable time in India and China. He 
is the Italian consul here. Mr. D. Nico- 
lini, his brother and partner, was in busi- 
ness as a trader of the Mediterranean 
coasts, and he too has, in his time, com- 
manded deep water craft. 



GALVESTON AS A COTTON MARKET. 




/;5^^"^^^OTTOX is easily first of 
~ the staples of commerce 

at Galveston. Out of a 
total trade of $100,000,- 
000, approximately, for the 
year ending September 30, 
1SS9, the cotton year of the South- 
ern cities, the value of the cotton 
received in this market was $52,- 
500,000. In bales the receipts were 
809,341, an increase over the season pre- 
ceding of 190,630, or values of $12,- 
390,950. 

The increase in receipts since the sea- 
son of 1884-85, has been, in round num- 
bers, 240,000 bales, and $22,000,000 of 
values thereby; since 1880 it is 515,267 
bales and $43^250,000 in values. But one 
Southern city. New Orleans, has a greater 
cotton trade, and but two cities of the 
country, New Orleans and New York, 
are larger cotton markets. Savannah 
which, for many years, has been a spirited 
rival of Galveston for place, has fallen 
behind in the race, chiefly because of the 
advantage this city has in the extension of 
the area of her back country of Texas, 
devoted to cotton. 

Tlie cotton crojD of Texas last year was 
1,300,000 l)ales. Galveston therefore 
handled a quantity equal to sixty-two per 
cent of the State's product, and an eighth of 
the product of the South. About half the 
receipts of this market are destined ulti- 
mately for Northern looms ; the other 
half goes abroad, to Liverpool largely, 
for Manchester and other English spin- 
ners, to Havre, Bremen, Hamburg, St. 
Petersburg and other Continental ports. 
The statement of the Collector of the 
Port, in the chapter preceding this, shows 
that the shipments to European ports from 
Galveston via New York, continue to 
increase at a greater relative rate than the 
shipments foreign direct. This is because 
New York affords superior advantages as 



a distributing center both domestic and 
foreign, and because the deficiency of 
this port in respect of its bar necessitates 
an extra levy upon commerce for lighter- 
ing the larger vessels. 

COMPRESS AND STORAGE FACILITIES. 

For such a trade as this of Galveston in 
cotton, the most comprehensive compress 
and storage facilities are requisite. These 
are provided by the Gulf City Cotton 
Press & Manufacturing Co. and the Tay- 
lor Compress Co. which operates, besides 
its own compress, the Factors and 
Shippers presses, owned by the South- 
ern Cotton Press & Manufacturing 
Company. Over $1,500,000 is invested 
in these various enterprises. The build- 
ings are all substantially built of brick 
and are connected by side track with both 
railroads and shipping. The four com- 
presses in them are of the latest pattern, 
and with their machinery 4,750 bales a day 
can be compressed. The yai"ds and sheds 
have storage capacity equal to 114,000 
bales a day or 680,000 for the season, and 
this capacity could be largely increased 
by utilizing yards now lying idle. 

The Taylor Compress Company, 
which has its offices corner of Post Office 
and Thirtieth streets, owns the presses 
and warehouses covering two and a half 
blocks on Market street, between Twenty- 
ninth and Thirty-second streets, and is 
operating, under lease, besides its own, 
the Shippers and the Factors presses, the 
former situated on both sides of Mechanic 
street, from Twenty-eighth to Thirty- 
first, and the latter on both sides of 
Church, between the same thoroughfares, 
or four blocks each. The Taylor Com- 
press Company has two compresses, one 
of 1,200 tons power, equal to 800 to i,ooo 
bales a day of ten hours ; the other of 
4.000 tons and 750 bales a day. The 



THE CIT-Y OF GALVESTON. 



75 



Shippers has an Soo to i,ooo bales a day 
press, and the Factors one of about the 
same capacity. The storage capacity of 
the yards and warehouses of the Taylor 
press is about 30,000 bales a day, or 150,- 
000 bales for the season, and of the Ship- 
pers and Factors, 400,000 bales a season. 
The three presses, therefore, have facili- 
ties to compress 3,350 to 3,500 bales a day 
and storage for 500,000 bales in a season. 
From present indications the lessee com- 
pany will handle at the Taylor, for the 
cotton buyers, the spinners' buyers, ex- 
porters and shippers located here, during 
the present season, (1889-90,) 100,000 to 
115,000 bales, and at the others (the 
Shippers chiefly), 80,000 to 90,000, or 
from 180,000 to 240,000 bales. 

These presses are all located adjacent 
to the railroads entering the city and are 
connected with them by special tracks. 
Thev are equipped with the Taylor pat- 
tern of steam and hydi'aulic presses. The 
Taylor Compress Company's new 4,000 
ton Miller press is the most powerful com- 
press in the South. It is furnished with 
"cut offs," and can be adjusted in a few 
minutes to give any pressure required on 
a bale of cotton. Where four of the cyl- 
inders are used it can turn out 120 bales 
an hour by putting 2,000 tons pressure on 
each bale. With six cylinders the bale 
receives a pressure of 3,000 tons, and with 
all of its eight cylinders in use it exerts a 
pressure of 4,000 tons on the bale. With 
this compress the company guarantees to 
load a 40,000 pound standard box car with 
80 bales of 520 pounds each, or more than 
its full capacity, and to put 5,000 bales 
into a vessel of 1,000 tons register. 

The Taylor Compress Company has no 
open yard ; the whole property is covered 
with one and two story brick warehouses 
completely roofed in. The other two 
have the usual arrangement of covered 
sheds, open at one side, and open central 
yards. They are all well provided with 
the facilities to extingfuish fire, and have 



an ample force of employes to guard 
against it. The Taylor press employs 
about 100 men and the other two about 
the same number each. There are wells 
and cisterns, hydrants and hose provided 
them, and Babcock extinguishers distrib- 
uted throughout, for any incipient blazes. 
Automatic sprinklers also are to be put 
into the Taylor press warehouses next 
season. 

The Taylor Compress Company, oper- 
ating these iDresses, was organized in 1876 
by buyers and shippers and others inter- 
ested in the trade, to build the Taylor 
press, which derived its name from the 
patentee of the compress ordered for its 
use. The Taylor press originally put in 
has been replaced by those already men- 
tioned, and greater power, speed and effi- 
ciency has thus been secured. The officers 
of this company are Wm. F. Ladd, of 
W. F. Ladd & Co., cotton buyers, 
president ; Thomas Gonzales, of vSloan & 
Gonzales, cotton buyers also, treasurer, 
and Wm. Crooks, general manager. Mr. 
Ladd is vice-president of the Cotton 
Exchange and has long been one of the 
most prominent figures in the cotton trade 
here. He is secretary and ti"easurer also 
of the Galveston Bagging & Cordage 
Company and is interested in a number ot 
other local enterprises. Mr. Gonzales is 
too, a notable man in the Galveston cotton 
market. He likewise has been vice-pres- 
ident of the Exchange, and his firm is 
regarded one of the most substantial in 
the business. 

The Southern Cotton Press & Manufac- 
turing Company, owning the Shippers and 
Factors presses, is a corporation having 
$1,000,000 capital, and owning besides 
these press properties, the old Merchants, 
now given over to storage, and some 
twenty-nine blocks of ground all told, the 
whole worth fully as much as its capitali- 
zation. J. H. Hutchings, of Ball, Hutch- 
ings & Co., bankers, is president of the 
company. 



76 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



LEADING HOUSES OF TIIE TRADE. 

Facilities for the traffic of every sort 
are provided, — railroad, banking, com- 
mercial ; the latter by a number of houses 
of exceptionally substantial resources, 
among whom the following are notable : 

W. F. Ladd & Co.,. Strand and Twenty- 
first street, having been in the business for 
nearly half a century, is one of the most 
solid cotton houses of the South. Before 
the war this house was known as Ladd tS: 
Armory, and after the close of that event- 
ful period as A. H. Ladd Sc Co. the senior 
member then being the uncle of the senior 
member of to-day, W. F, Ladd. This 
house buys in this market and through cor- 
respondents throughout the interior, and 
handles during the season from 50,000 to 
60,000 bales of the staple. For many years 
it has had established connections with 
Northern manufacturing centers and it is 
a house whose standing and character 
makes it a thoroughly representative 
establishment. Mr. W. F. Ladd is pres- 
ident of the Taylor Compress Co., and 
president of the Gulf City Cotton Com- 
press & Manufacturing Co., vice-presi- 
dent of the Cotton Exchange and chair- 
man of some of its most important com- 
mittees, is secretary and treasurer of the 
Galveston Bagging Co., director of the 
Galveston Cotton & Woolen Mills, and 
director of the Texas Land & Loan Co. 
Mr. J. C. S. Spencer, the "Co." of this 
firm, is also vice-president of the Taylor 
Compress Co. and a director of the Gal- 
veston Wharf Co. 

Lammers & Flixt, cotton factors and 
commission merchants, Strand between 
Twenty-first and Twenty-second streets, 
are large dealers in the leading staples of 
Texas such as cotton, wool, etc. They 
have been prominently identified with the 
commercial interests of the State for the 
last twenty-five years and are classed with 
its leading business men. They get con- 
signments of cotton from all parts of the 



State, and their rooms often contain the 
samples of 5,000 bales of cotton on hand 
and for sale ; and they receive considera- 
ble shipments of wool for sale in this mar- 
ket, from the different wool-growing dis- 
tricts of Texas as well as from neighbor- 
ing States, and make advances upon 
shipments at the reduced rates of six per 
cent interest per annum. The members 
of this firm are connected in various ways 
with the moneyed institutions and indus- 
trial enterprises of Galveston and they 
have long been resident here. 

Agencies are maintained here by 
many large foreign houses, who buy in 
this and the Houston market, and send 
out buyers also into the country districts. 
There are numerous brokers in the staple 
too. Changes in the trade, resulting from 
railroad methods, the building of com- 
presses in the interior, and dealings of 
shippers with the countrymen direct, have 
diverted some business from the factors ; 
but this loss has been more than made 
good by the growth of the wool and hide 
business, and of importations of coffee, 
in which many of them also engage. 

The merchants of all classes in the trade 
and with them many of other lines, are 
organized as a Cotton Exchange, which, 
of late, in response to the general desire, 
has assumed the functions also of a Board 
of Trade for the city. It has 151 active 
members, and its action voices popular 
opinion with respect to the business inter- 
ests of both port and city. Julius Runge. 
banker and cotton factor, is its president, 
leading merchants its directors. 

Three large new manufacturing con- 
cerns lately established in the city, wit- 
ness the reciprocal relations developed 
between the planter of Texas and the 
merchant of Galveston, a jute bagging 
mill, a cotton goods factory and a cotton 
rope and twine mills. These are described 
hereinafter, in the chapter of this work 
on the manufactures of the city ; and so 
also are the cotton oil mills of Galveston. 



GENERAL TRADE OF THE CITY. 




HILE cotton overshad- 
ows all the other lines 
of trade at Galveston, 
not merely in respect 
of its volume, but as 
well from the indus- 
tries dependent upon 
it, the commerce of the city still has con- 
siderable variety, and numerous other 
branches of business serve as a measure 
of its enterprise and progress, 

Galveston has about fifty large jobbing 
houses. Some of these do business upon 
a scale that would rank them among the 
foremost in any city. Most of them are 
long established. Many of them have 
extraordinary resources. Several of them 
employ from a dozen to thirty drum- 
mers. Three of them do, between them, 
$6,500,000 in sales a year. Two of them 
carry insurance on their stocks to the 
amount for both, of $1,300,000. There 
has not been a failure of note in several 
years. 

Seaports, as a rule, do a third more 
business than inland cities of equal popu- 
lation. Galveston, in point of fact, does 
a half more than the same sized places in 
Texas. The estimate of the Galveston 
News that its jobbing trade alone, irre- 
spective of cotton, manufactures, build- 
ing improvements, real estate transfers 
and retail business, is $25,000,000 is very 
modest indeed. It is likely very much 
more. The importations of coffee, hard- 
ware, dry goods, cotton ties, coal, liquors, 
salt and sundries, we have seen already, 
were $1,750,000 in iSSS alone, and are 
fast rising above $2,000,000 a year. The 
grain trade of the city is between $750,000 
and $1,000,000 a year. The produce 
business is little less. Sugar receipts 
from the Texas plantations, although they 



increase little, if any, are upwards of 
$500,000 in the aggregate. The lumber 
trade rises above $1,000,000. Wool and 
hides, not counting the shipments through, 
which, in the absence of a record, may be 
anything from $1,000,000, or $10,000,000, 
are certainly $1,500,000. Here are $6,- 
000,000 alone, not counting the regular 
commercial lines, like groceries, dry goods, 
clothing, drugs, pamts, etc. 

The jobbing capital of the city, as given 
in the Nezvs^ is $10,000,000. The grocery 
sales aggregates $12,500,000.; dry goods, 
$5,000,000 ; clothing and furnishing goods, 
$1,500,000; boots arid shoes, $i,oco,ooo; 
hardware and agricultural implements, 
$2,000,000 ; lumber, sash, blinds and mate- 
rial of that character, $1,250,000; cotton 
cake and oil, $1,500,000; live stock, 
$500,000; drugs, paints and oils, $650,- 
000; ties and baling stuffs, $600,000; 
crockery, furniture and sundry classifica- 
tions, absorb the remainder of the total. 
These figures do not cover the manufac- 
tures or retail trade of the city at all, 
which two items would add ten or twelve 
millions more to the grand aggregate. 

The importations are a measure of the 
business done. They amount to $2,000,- 
000 as compared with $10,000,000 for 
New Orleans, a city of five times the 
population of Galveston, but having very 
similar trade. The imports of coffee, 
for 1SS9, estimated by the report of the 
first half year were $601, SS6, an increase 
of fifty per cent. According to F. Can- 
non k. Co., the importations of coffee are 
doubled over two years ago. From Rio 
75,000 to 80,000 bags now come yearly. 
According to Miller & Ayers, the receipts 
of Galveston, direct and indirect, are 
100,000 to 125,000 bags a year. 

The next largest item to coffee was 



78 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



hardware, $538,136; then dry goods, 
$329,440; cotton ties next, $129,868; 
wines and liquors, $67,398; coal and 
coke, $63,456; salt, $34,000; cement, 
$25,062; sundries, $257,002; total, ^i,- 
936,238. Among the exports, the most 
notable, besides cotton, are wool, hides 
and peltries, grain and flour, sugar, cot- 
ton oil, cake and meal. 

The estimated business of the city, 
founded upon these items, is cotton, 
$50,000,000; jobbing lines, $25,000,000; 
retail trade, $1,500,000; manufactures, 
$10,000,000; building improvements and 
public works, like the jetties, water 
works, etc., $3,500,000; real estate 
and miscellaneous, $1,000,000; goods in 
transit, west-bound, $7,500,000; total, 
$100,000,000. This is an under, rather 
than an over estimate. 

The trade territory of Galveston is 
described in the chapters concerning her 
transportation and maritime interests. It 
is continuously extending. .Galveston 
has a larger business with New York on 
the one hand, and San Francisco on the 
other than any Southern city, New Orleans 
excepted. It has a very considerable 
Mexican trade. It is a convenient point 
for foreign shipping returning homeward 
from the ports of the Gulf and South 
America, and seeking cargo. It is the 
only port of Texas, and of all the great 
West back of it to the West, Northwest 
and Southwest. It has competitive freight 
rates in its systems of transportation by 
land and water. It has more manufac- 
tures than any city of the State to give its 
mercantile business variety and stability. 
It is a wealthy city, with the resources 
within itself to continue its advancement. 

THE LEADING JOBI5IXG HOUSES. 

P. J. Willis & Bro., cotton factors and 
importers of and wholesale dealers in gro- 
ceries, dry goods, notions, dress goods, 
boots and shoes and hats, is the oldest and 



foremost house of Galveston; and in the 
matter of aggregate business, stock carried 
and general resources, has few, if any, 
rivals in its trade territory, Texas, Louis- 
iana, Indian Territory, Arkansas and 
Mexico. 

It was established in 1S39, when Galves- 
ton was hardly more than an outjDost of 
the great commercial world. The re- 
sources for its foundation here were com- 
pacted at different points in the interior, 
and the solid fabric of a metropolitan 
enterprise was raised here with them in 
1S67, by P. J. and R. S. Willis. In that, 
the developmental stage in the history of 
this trade center — for the city, while the 
first in Texas was yet somewhat obscure — 
the business of the house naturally was 
restricted ; but it grew apace with the 
country looking to Galveston as a market, 
and not many years later was recognized 
in New Orleans, then the undisputed mis- 
tress of the Gulf, as a strong competitor 
of many of the largest houses of that 
important place. Gradually but surely 
rising among these and other rivals, a 
position was attained by it far above medi- 
ocrity and for years it has sustained the 
reputation of Galveston over a wider field 
than any of the local mercantile concerns. 

In 1873, it is recorded, P. J. Willis, then 
senior in the firm, died, and his children 
having inherited his interest, the firm was 
reconstructed. R. S. Willis, of the orig- 
inal firm, P. J, Willis, a son of P. J. de- 
ceased, and J. G. Goldthwate, his son-in- 
law, are the partners now. The estate of 
Wm. H. Willis, who died May i6th, 1SS8, 
also holds an interest. For the purpose 
of perpetuating the name and business, 
the partners sometime ago concluded to 
incorporate, and did so last July, under 
the name of P. J. Willis & Bro. No 
change was made, however, in the man- 
agement. The same capital was contin- 
ued in the business and the direction of 
affairs remains in the same competent 
hands. 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 

Mr. R. S. Willis is one of the most 



79 



1-espected and wealthiest merchants of the 
city. He is president of the Galveston 
National Bank, a reorganization of the 



of Texas, acquired during his long and 
successful business career. The other 
gentlemen of the firm also have solid 
resources of a similar character. 




old Texas Banking & Insurance Company, 
and has large interests in many of the 
most important financial and business 
enterprises of the city. He owns also 
real estate here and lands in various parts 



The firm owns the block occupied by it 
for business purposes, the Willis buildings 
on Strand, two connected brick structures 
covering the area of half a square, one 
three and the other four stories high, as 



80 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



represented in the illustration set in this 
matter. This property is situated adja- 
cent to the central railroad depot here. 
and has side track communication with 
all the lines that terminate here. It is also 
close to the wharves and ship landings. 
The various floors afford 100,000 square 
feet of storage surface, but this is all nec- 
essary, extraordinary as the figures seem, 
for the vast and valuable stock carried, 
comprising in the greatest fullness and 
variety, all the staples and niauv special- 



ities are supeinor in scope and in detail to 
those afforded by anj^ house of the South- 
west. 

JNIexsing Bros. & Co., wholesale gro- 
cers and cotton factors, are one of the 
firms that sustain, by an annual business 
closely approaching a round million of 
transactions, the commercial prestige of 
Galveston. Like the other large concerns 
of the city, they have grown from small 
beginnings with the development of the 
resources of the citv and State, but the 










MENSING BROTHERS & COMPANY S FLACE. 



ties of the lines enumerated at the begin- 
ning of this account. 

The business of the house is of a varied 
and miscellaneous character ; but it is 
thoroughly systematized by a division into 
departments, and is conducted with a per- 
fection of method unusual except to houses 
long established and as affluent as this. 
The advantage of doing business with 
such a house is evident — a house whose 
rating is the highest accorded by the com- 
mercial agencies ; whose lines of goods are 
the most comprehensive, and whose facil- 



position they occupy in the trade they are 
classed with, is largely, as it always is, 
the result of their own diligence, enter- 
prise and good management. 

The partnership of Mensing Bros. & 
Co. as it is to-day, is the succession to a 
consolidation of the interests of two old 
houses here, G. H. Mensing & Bro. and 
Moore, Stratton & Co. made in 1SS2. 
G. H. Mensing & Bro. were cotton fac- 
tors only, up to that time, while Moore, 
Stratton & Co. were in the wholesale 
grocery business. The consolidated 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



81 



house was known fox* two years as Mens- 
ing, Stratton & Co., but when Mr. Strat- 
ton withdrew hi 1885, leaving his old 
associate, Mr. James Moore, in company 
with Mensing Brothers, the name Mensing 
Bros. & Co. was permanently adopted. 

Fully $300,000 of capital is embarked 
in the stock, facilities and working re- 
sources of this house. It has five men on 
the road in Texas. It handles from 
8,000 to 13,000 bales of cotton a year. It 
is therefore not surprising that its business 
rises to a figure between three quarters of a 
million and a million dollars in the grocery 
business alone. The staples of the grocery 
trade are all handled — provisions, coffee, 



State. Mr, G. H. Mensing was in the 
cotton trade at Brenham before he came, 
here ; has been in it, in fact, since 1868. 
Mr. Wm. Mensing has been in his brother's 
company, in all his enterprises since 1869. 
Their place of business is corner of Strand 
and Twenty-second. An illustration 
accompanying this matter shows its ex- 
ternal appearance, and on page 7 of this 
work is a picture of the residence of the 
senior member of the firm. 

Leon & H. Blum, importers of and 
wholesale dealers in dry goods, notions, 
hats, boots and shoes, etc., corner of 
Mechanic and Twenty-fourth streets, is a 
house sustaining the prestige of Galveston 




LEON & H. BLUM'S ESTABLISHMENT. 



sugar, molasses and general plantation and 
farm supplies especially. Some wool and 
hides also figure in the firm's transac- 
tions. 

The burdens of management are divided 
between the partners as follows : Mr. G. 
H. Mensing attends to the grocery busi- 
ness, cotton sales and to affairs on 
'Change, Mr. Wm. E. Mensing to the 
credits and office details. Mr. G. H. Mens- 
ing IS president of one of the local com- 
press companies, and has stock in a num- 
ber of profitable enterprises ; and so also 
has his brother. Mensing Bros, are of 
German derivation and were raised in this 



as a trade center, in the full extent of the 
city's tributary territory. It is a house 
carrying a stock invoiced at $750,000 to 
$1,000,000 in the aggregate, and doing a 
business upwards of $5,000,000 in volume 
a year, throughout all the States of the 
Southwest, and also in Mexico. It has an 
organization perfected during over thirty 
years of successful business, and employs 
some ninety persons in the house as sales- 
men, clerks, porters, etc., and about thirty 
more as traveling men. Its system of 
management is one of many departments, 
any one of which does the business of an 
ordinary house, each having its buyer and 



82 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



each conducted separately, but the whole 
under the direction of an experienced 
general manager and assistant to the 
principals, Messrs. Leon and Hyman 
Blum, gentlemen known, by the import- 
ant character of their entei-prises, invest- 
ments and resources, not only thi-oughout 
the length and breadth of Texas but in all 
the great markets of the country in which 
the lines they handle originate. They 
have intimate relations with the manufac- 
turers of these lines and can sell on the 
closest margins, and the big stocks they 
carry make them largely independent of 
ordinary fluctuations. 

A. Blum, an elder brother of the part- 
ners, now some years deceased, and Leon 
Blum, senior member of the firm, laid the 
foundations of this extraordinary business 
before the war. In 1865 the firm name, 
Leon & H. Blum, was adopted. The part- 
ners then were Leon, Hyman and Sylvain 
Blum, to whom Leon and Hyman Blum 
succeeded later. Messrs. Leon and H. 
Blum are bank directors, stockholders in 
the most important concerns of Galveston, 
large tax payers on realty in the city and 
the controlling spirits in the Leon & H. 
Blum Land Co., which is capitalized to 
the extent of $1,000,000 and has nearly 
1,000,000 acres of lands in Texas and 
other parts of the Southwest for sale. 

The premises occupied by this house 
are a sufficient indication, without further 
illustration, of the business they do. They 
own and use the whole of a three-story 
block, 150 feet by 250, situated on 
Mechanic street and fronting at the corner 
of Twenty-fourth. The various floors of 
this main building afford 112,500 square 
feet of surface, and a warehouse addi- 
tional increases this area to 125,000 square 
feet. Goods and merchandise occupy all 
this available area, and they frequently 
have enough purchased and in transit to 
fill another establishment like it. As these 
structures were built to the order of the 
firm, they are especially adapted to the 



business and aie admirably lighted and 
ventilated. To an experienced eye the 
place presents the appearance of a vast 
emporium or jnagasin., a model of its 
kind. From it a legion of country trades- 
men are furnished with complete stocks 
of the goods dealt in, and many of the 
jobbers of the State look to it for their 
entire supply. Offices are maintained for 
purchasing and financial purposes at 123 
Duane street, New York (in which city 
Mr. Hyman Blum resides), and at no 
Summer sti-eet, Boston. It has been 
called the representative house of its kind 
in Texas, and the phrase, hackneyed as it 
is by frequent application, is, in this 
instance, no misnomer. 

Leon Blum, the head of the house, is 
largely engaged in prosecution of outside 
affairs, in which he has investments, and 
much of his time is therefore busily occu- 
pied. He has, however, found leisure for 
a labor of pride with him, namely, the 
advancement of the commercial interests 
of the port, as they are bound up in the 
agitation for deep water. He has con- 
tributed both time and money to this work 
and has been the representative of the city 
at Washington when bills were under dis- 
cussion ; and at the two Inter-State Con- 
ventions which have been pressing the 
matter upon Congress with greater assur- 
ance of immediate action than at any 
period of the movement. His vveight and 
influence have been actively exerted 
indeed in every public matter that could 
possibly benefit Galveston. Mr. A. Fer- 
rier, long with the house in a confidential 
capacity, assists him in its management. 

The Leon & H, Blum Land Co., 
which has holdings in half the counties of 
Texas, was incorporated in 18S2, with 
$1,000,000 capital. Leon Blum, of Leon 
& H. Blum, the largest dry goods mer- 
chants of the Southwest, is its president ; 
S. Blum, vice-president, and A. Ferrier, 
secretary and treasurer. It has its offices 
at the Galveston establishment of the firm 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



83 



of Leon & H. Blum, corner of Mechanic 
and Twenty-fourth streets. 

The lands of this company to the extent 
of a million acres nearly, all told, are 
held for sale in tracts of one acre to 150,- 
000. They ai"e improved, some of them, 
and others unimproved. The company 
deals in stock ranches lai'gely, vv^ith and 
without cattle. It is the largest in capital- 
ization, resources and transactions, of the 
land and cattle companies of Texas. 

Wai.i.is, Landes & Co., wholesale 
grocers, importers of liquors, cigars, 
tobacco, woodenware, etc., and cotton 
factors, Strand, between Twenty-fourth 
and Twenty-fifth, are remarkable, not 
merely for the business the house does 
(variously estimated at from $1,500,000 to 
$3,000,000 a year), but as much for their 
long establishment, high standing and 
rating, and solid resources. Scarcely an 
eiiterprise of the city but they have stock in 
and in many of them they have very large 
interests indeed. The house was estab- 
lished at the close of the war, in which 
all the founders of it had actively partici- 
pated. The original firm had for its prin- 
cipals J. C. and J. E. Wallis and H. A. 
Landes. The last and second named are 
survivors of that original partnership. 
J. C. Wallis died in 1S72, and in 1882 
Charles L. Wallis, son of J. E., was 
admitted to an interest. 

Five traveling men sell for this house 
and solicit consignments of cotton in very 
nearly all of Texas, and in Western Lou- 
isiana. The house handles all the staples 
of the grocery trade, and receives from 
eight to twelve thousand bales of cotton 
a year. It is said to be the oldest house 
of its line, that is to say, longest estab- 
lished and in continuous business, here. 
It has large dealings in Texas lands as 
well as cotton. 

The senior partner, Mr. J. E. Wallis 
has been a resident of Texas nearly all 
his life. It is now some forty-two years 
since he first came here. He was a store- 



keeper before the war, in the country. He 
is the president of the National Bank of 
Texas, is vice-president and one of the 
largest stockholders in the Galveston and 
Western Railway, the narrow gauge road 
on the Island, is a large stockholder in 
the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Rail- 
road, director of the City Company 
(already referred to in this work), direc- 
tor also of the Gulf Cotton Press Co. 
and of the Texas Banking and Insurance 
Co., and with his partner, is a large holder 
of stock in the new cotton mills and can- 
ning factory and the Galveston Twine & 
Cordage Co. 

Mr. Landes is a director of the Texas 
Land & Loan Co., the Galveston Real 
Estate & Loan Co., the Galveston Can- 
ning & Packing Co., the Galveston Cord- 
age and Twine Co., and is interested in 
numerous other concerns of a like char- 
acter. 

The Texas Co-operative Associa- 
tion, an organization auxiliary in purpose, 
and allied to the Patrons of Husbandry of 
the State by mutual membership relations, 
but operated as a business enterprise inde- 
pendent of the " grange," has very large 
stores here at the corner of Strand and 
Twentieth street, and having been nearly 
twelve years established is widely known 
by its trade in nearly all the Lone Star 
State. This Association has been incor- 
porated and $75,000 of its authorized 
capital stock of $100,000, has been paid 
in. The officers of the Association are 
R. E. Steele of Cotton Gin, president ; 
A. J. Rose, of Salado, master of the 
State Grange of Texas (president also 
of the Texas State Grange Fair, and of the 
Texas Alutual Fire Insurance Co, P. of 
H.), secretary; J. W. Waltmann, farmer 
and store-keeper of Jewett, treasurer, and 
J. S. Rogers (treasurer of the Grange 
Fair Association and secretary and treas- 
urer of the Grange Insurance Co.), man- 
ager. Mr. Rogers has been manager of 
the stores here for about ten years, and 



84 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



much of the success which has been met 
with, is unquestionably due to his dili- 
gence and capacity. 

The Association does a wholesale busi- 
ness in groceries, dry goods, notions, boots 
and shoes and hats, a cotton factorage and 
commission business, — general merchan- 
dising in fact, — and has transactions 
aggi-egating for the year, between $300,- 
000 and $350,000. Its plan and system 
of purchase and sales, the co-operative 
feature — have been found entirely practi- 
cal ; the success of the institution is suf- 
ficient proof of that. It began with the 
exceedingly modest capital of $265, and 
for a long time the business done by it 
was quite moderate, but it has now a 
working capital of $100,000, a stock on 
hand of groceries and dry goods and com- 
modities of these two classes, valued at 
$92,319, and, as has been said, an annual 
business that compares favorably with 
that of the largest houses here located. 
The profits of $310,000 business in 1889 
were such that the directors have ordered 
a sum set apart for a building fund. The 
Association has now nearly 700 members. 
Patrons of Husbandry in the State, and 
although its customers are almost entirely 
of that order, sales are frequently made 
to others. 

Mr. Rogers has been connected with the 
Grange movement from its inception. 
He was one of the first Southwestern 
organizei-s of that potential body which 
now has its ramifications in every State, 
and he had charge of the first gi-ange 
store opened in Texas. He came here 
from Red River county about ten years 
ago. The Texas Mutual Fire Insurance 
Co., of which he is also manager, has re- 
duced its limit of risks and is issuing its 
certificates of membership every day. All 
premiums paid this company not con- 
sumed by losses, revert to the insurer 
under certain conditions, and assist him in 
continuing his insurance. 

The advantage of the co-operative 



method of business, no longer needs de- 
monstration. It has been illustrated in 
numerous callings, in some instances as 
the voluntary proposal of employers. 
It has lately been attracting more than 
ordinary attention as a remedy for many 
defects of prevailing industrial conditions. 
The trusts even have grasped and applied 
some of its most strengthening and effec- 
tive features ; and since it has exemplifi- 
cation in this very venture of the Patrons 
of Husbandry, the farmer of Texas has the 
point, the "nub," and the gist of the whole 
argument for it, clearly presented to him. 
The Texas Co-operative Association is 
not engaged in any propaganda of princi- 
ples or aims ; it is a business concern, 
organized by business men, for business 
purposes ; and is run as only such estab- 
lishments can be, on strictly business prin- 
ciples. 

Weis Bros., leading wholesale dealers 
in and importers of staple and fancy dry 
goods, boots, shoes, notions, hats, trunks, 
etc., in the substantial brick structure at 
63 to 70 Strand (old numbers), do a busi- 
ness of metropolitan character and pro- 
portions. They carry a stock of goods 
valued at $500,000 to $600,000, have ten 
traveling men selling for them, besides 
twenty-five salesmen and clerks here, and 
dispose of $800,000 to $1,000,000 worth 
of goods a year, chiefly in Texas, but con- 
siderable also in Louisiana and Arkansas. 
They have ofiices and the various lines of 
dry goods on the first floor, notions and 
furnishing goods on the second, boots, 
shoes and hats on the third and fourth, 
and a surplus stock in a warehouse in the 
rear. 

This house has been well known in 
years past as Halff, Weis & Co., whole- 
sale clothing and gents' furnishing goods 
dealers, established in 1S73. Mr. Halff 
withdrew from the original partnership 
four years ago, and soon after a change 
was made in the general features of the 
business, so as to pursue a more miscella- 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



85 



neous trade in dry goods and the other 
lines mentioned. In this movement Weis 
Bros, were only keeping abreast of the 
times, and wisely adapting their business 
policy to the changing conditions of the 
trade of the day. They have always, 
indeed, since they have been here, ex- 
hibited intelligence and enterprising 
methods of business. 

The successful issue of their venture is 
indicated by the number of other concerns 
in which the house, or the partners indi- 
vidually, are interested. Major Weis, 
senior member of the firm, is president of 
the Citizens' Loan Company of this city, 
president of the Galveston Water Com- 
mission, president also of the Galveston 
Cotton and Woolen Mills, ex-president of 
the Island City Savings Bank, and is a 
director of the First National Bank, of the 
Texas Land & Loan Co. and Galveston 
Canning & Packing Co. Mr. R. Weis 
also has interests of this sort that are 
valuable. He is the credits and accounts 
man of the firm ; Major Weis, the mana- 
ger of the buying and sales and other out- 
side details. 

Maj. Weis derives his title from service 
upon Gen. Oppenheimer's staff, Texas 
contingent Confederate service, he having 
abandoned his business in Oakland, Col- 
orado county, in this State, to enlist with 
the San Antonio banker and merchant. 
In 1865, he returned to Oakland and re- 
embarked in business as one of the firm of 
Weis & Bock. In 1867, he sold out to 
Bock and came here, and was a partner in 
Strauss & Co., cotton and merchandising, 
for a time, and until he and his brother 
bought out Strauss and effected the part- 
nership with Halff. His brother had 
been with him in Oakland and came with 
him here. In fact, their business interests 
have been identical, so to speak, ever 
since the war. 

J. RosENFiELD & Co. (J. Rosenficld, 
the Co. being nominal) do the largest bus- 
ness of any house here engaged in notions 




WEIS BROTHERS' ESTABLISHMENT. 

and fancy goods exclusivelv. Mr. Rosen- 
field occupies the whole of one building on 
the Strand, between Twenty-second and 
Twenty-third, and the ground floor of 
another, with as varied and well selected a 
stock of notions, fancy goods, ladies' hats, 
stationery and toys, as the original markets 
from which such supplies are drawn 
afford. He is himself an expert in his 
business, qualified for it by a life-long 
service in it, and is withal, an enterprising 
and thorough manager, giving all his time 
to his trade. He is a property owner, 
vice-president of the Citizens' Loan Co. 
and is a stockholder in a number of other 
enterprises here. 

Rice, Baulard & Co., dealers in paints 
and oils, glass, paper-hangings, etc., con- 
tracting painters and manufacturers of 
paints, at 77 Tremont street, do the largest 
business in their line and ai^e unquestion- 
ably the oldest house of the kind in the 



86 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



State. It was established by Jos. W. 
Rice, who came to Galveston soon after 
its foundation, fifty years ago, and who is 
still actively engaged in the business. He 
is the oldest merchant, both in years and 
length of service, in fact, of Galveston — 
the patriarch of the business commu- 
nity, esteemed generally for a business 
record without a blemish and for the 
strength and integrity of his personal 
character. 

Air. Rice began business here as a mas- 
ter painter. The late Victor J. Baulard 
was apprenticed to him about forty-five 
years ago, and in 1850 they founded the 




RICE, BAULARD & COMPANY'S PLACE. 

house of Rice & Baulard, which was 
engaged in jobbing and in painting con- 
tracts, before the war. About twenty years 
ago Mr. Geo. W. Outterside, Mr. Rice's 
partner now, engaged with the firm of 
Rice & Baulard, and was admitted to an 
interest in 1881. Mr. Baulard died in 
October, 1889, and his interest is still held 
by his widow. Mr. Rice gives affairs a 
general supervision, and Mr. Outterside 
manages the outside affairs and does 
the buying. 

They handle painters' supplies of all 
kinds, paper hangings and window shades, 



and are agents for the sale of such stand- 
ard materials as Collier's, the Southern Co. 
and Carter's white lead, Devoe's artists' 
materials, Johnson's kalsomine, and var- 
nishes. Glass is a specialty with them, and 
they carry a large stock of it. They for- 
merly manufactured paints with machin- 
ery, as the Galveston Paint Co., and still 
employ about ten or a dozen hands on 
painting work in the city. They carry a 
$35,000 stock and have business in both 
Texas and Louisiana. 

F. Cannon & Co., Strand, between 
Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth, are a 
leading importing and commission house 
of Galveston. They have now been about 
three years established. They are import- 
ers of coffee and general commission mer- 
chants for the sale of sugar, molasses, 
flour, grain, provisions, bagging and ties, 
etc. 

Hawlev & Heidenheimer, importers 
of coffee and salt, corner of Twenty- 
fourth and Strand, do a. very large busi- 
ness. They are in regular receipt of 
cargoes from Liverpool, Rio and Mexican 
ports, and they do a big trade also in 
sugar. Their sales are car lots altogether, 
made to dealers in all parts of Texas and 
the trade territoi-y of Galveston. 

Mr. R. B. Hawley of the firm, has 
been promment as a merchant here for the 
last ten years. He was a delegate, rep- 
resenting the city, at the recent session of 
the Inter-State Deep Harbor convention, 
held at Topeka, Kansas, and he gives an 
active support to all measures calculated 
to forward the interests of the port of 
Galveston. Mr. Heidenheimer was for- 
merly of Heidenheimer Bros., wholesale 
grocers, and is still one of Heidenheimer 
& Co., their successors. He is a man of 
wealth, the owner of lands and property 
in the State, and has been a notable fig- 
ure in the business community for over 
thirty years. 

M. M. Lew, importer of coffee, man- 
ufacturers' agent and merchandise broker. 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



87 



Strand, between Twenty-fourth and 
Twenty-fifth, is the sole representative 
here for a number of the leading gi-oceiy, 
canning and specialty houses of the coun- 
try, and does perhaps the largest business 
as a merchandise broker in Galveston. 
His transactions in coffee, are however, 
a more important feature of his trade. 
He handled last year of the Mexican and 
Brazilian berry many thousands of bags, 
and had miscellaneous business transac- 
tions to a notable amount. He supplies 
a State as well as Galveston patronage, 
and nearly all the jobbing houses of this 
city and Houston are his patrons. 

Mr. Levy is a New Yorker by birth and 
was a merchant in Mexico for some years 
before he settled here in 1879. He was 
one of the firm of Uedemann & Levy 
in 1880, afterward Levy & Coutant, but 
for the last five years has been doing busi- 
ness for his own account solely. He has 
intelligent and experienced assistance in 
his oftice work and also on the street. 

J. W. Coutant, manufacturers' agent 
of this city, with offices on Strand between 
Twenty-first and Twenty-second, repre- 
sents a number of houses each of which is 
the recognized leader of its line. Among 
these are the Samuel Cupples Woodenware 
Co. and the Diamond Match Co. of St. 
Louis ; James S. Kirk & Co., laundry and 
toilet soaps, Chicago; H. M. Anthony 
of New York, " Sterling " ball potash and 
Horsford's bread preparations ; E. R. 
Durkee & Co., New York, spices and 
extracts ; John D wight & Co., New York, 
bi-carbonate of soda ^ Atmore & Co., 
Philadelphia, mince meats ; Corning & 
Co., Peoria, 111., whiskies; the Peoria 
Grape Sugar Co., glucose; Powell & 
Smith, New York, fine cigars ; L. Pickert 
& Co., Boston, mackerel; Justin J. Lan- 
gles & Co., New Orleans, crackers; 
Henry Verhage, Vienna and ham sausage, 
Cincinnati. 

Mr. Coutant has been in this business 
ever since he came here, some ten years 



ago. He sells to the Galveston jobbers 
only, and carries a sample stock of these 
various lines here. He is unquestionably 
a leading merchandise broker of the 
city. 

Ratto, Lang & Weinberger, 67 and 
69 Strand, between Twenty-fourth and 
Twenty-fifth, were established last April 
by a consolidation of two old houses, 
Lang& Weinbei-ger and T. Ratto & Co., 
both of whom had been fifteen or twenty 
years in business here. This combination 
makes one of the strongest houses, if not 
the strongest of its line, in the State of 
Texas. 

The new establishment is engaged in 
the same lines conducted by these parties 
before they came together, viz., general 
commission trade in fruit, produce and 
cigars, wholesale groceries, and the man- 
ufacture of confectionery. Four traveling 
men are maintained on the road, and thir- 
ty-one employes are engaged altogether, 
most of them in the manufacture of stick 
and mixed candies, carried on upon the 
third floor of the firm's place of business. 
The sales being made comprehend a 
somewhat larger trade territory than most 
of the business concerns here attempt to 
cover, viz., Texas, Kansas, Indian Terri- 
tory, and from Louisiana eastward to Key 
West, but this expansion is justified by 
the enlarged prospects of the house since 
the union. 

The street floor of this establishment is 
that upon which general sales are made 
and bulk goods handled ; the second holds 
a stock of cigars and confectionery ; the 
third, as has been said, is the candy fac- 
tory. The house already does the bulk of 
the tropical fruit trade of the city, and it 
has large orders for its specialty, the well 
known "Eagle" brand of stick candy. 

Mr. Ratto of the firm, is of Italian 
birth, but was raised in Memphis, and has 
been a merchant and manufacturer of 
candy here for twenty years. He will 
give especial attention to the candy trade 



88 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



of the house. Mr. Lang came here after 
he had served his four years in the war as 
a Confederate soldier, and has been in the 
line he follows now, ever since he settled 
here. He will give the fruit and produce 
trade of the house supervision. Mr. 
Weinberger came here from Austin in 
1873. He had been in the business there, 
and embarked in it with Air. Lang here in 
1879. The office, credits and accounts are 
his department. All three own property 
here and have a solid stake in the com- 
munity. Mr. Weinberger is a director 
of the People's Loan and Homestead 
Association and of the Island City Sav- 
ings Bank. 

J. B. Aguilo & Co., general commis- 
sion merchants, importers of foreign and 
dealers in domestic fruits and in Western 
produce, and wholesale grocers, at 212 and 
214 Strand, do a very large city business 
(probably $85,000 a year), and have con- 
siderable patronage in the country also. 
They make a specialty of the trade in but- 
ter and cheese, car-load lots of apples, 
potatoes, etc., in their season, and are 
usually stocked up to the extent of ten or 
fifteen thousand dollars' worth of all the 
lines they handle. Mr. Aguilo, senior 
member of the firm, manages the business 
generally, and Mr. C. Fittger, his partner, 
goes out on the road to sell the country 
trade and to solicit consignments. 

Mr. Aguilo is a native of New Orleans, 
but has lived in Galveston since his child- 
hood. He was with Seeligson & Co. and 
Wallis & Landes, leading houses here, 
before he went into business for himself, 
and these, with Adoue <& Lobit, bankers, 
and B. O. Bowers & Co. of New York, are 
the firm's references. He began business 
here as one of the firm of Wulf & Aguilo 
in 1883, but bought out Wulf three years 
after. Mr. Fittger and he have been in 
partnership now about a year. 

Mr. Aguilo is captain of the Washing- 
ton Guards, one of the crack militia com- 
panies of the State. Mr. Fittger is a 



native of the city and has been with Mr. 
Aguilo from his boyhood 

The J. S. Brown Hardware Co., the 
largest in resources and trade and most 
widely known of Texas hardware houses, 
presents, in every feature, the characteris- 
tics of a house of the highest order. It 
has been forty-three yeai's established and 
does a business of $1,000,000 a year, has 
an office in New York city, for purchase 
of its stock; handles the fullest lines of 
any concern competing with it in its trade 
territory ; and has all the resources to 
continue it in its lead. Its founder, Mr. 
J. M. Brown, the longest experienced, if 
not the oldest merchant of Galveston, 
still survives and shares in its manage- 
ment, but his son, Mr. J. S. Brown, is the 
executive head of it. It has increased its 
capital stock largely since the incorpora- 
tion of the stock company to conduct the 
business in 1885. 

The stock carried by this house com- 
prises shelf and builders' hardware of all 
sorts, carriage makers' materials, sad- 
dlery hardware, tools of all kinds, agi-i- 
cultural implements and wagons, barb 
wire, powder and shot, rubber andleathei 
belting, the Anchor brand of nails, 
Disston's saws, Howe and Fairbank's 
scales and wares of every sort commer- 
cially classed as hardware. These are 
supplied it by direct importations, by 
purchase from the manufacturers, or by 
its New York buyer, Mr. Le Count, 
located at 82 Stewart building, and they 
fill here, the main building of the firm 
having a block front on one street by 120 
on the other and a warehouse opposite 
besides, larger premises than those of any 
hardware house south of Mason & Dixon's 
line. The offices of the house are in its 
larger establishment, corner of Strand and 
Tremont street. Altogether 31.000 square 
feet of floor service is occupied for sales 
departments. 

The J. S. Brown Hardware Co. has 
six traveling men out. They sell every- 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



89 



where in Texas, and also in Western 
Louisiana. It has twenty employes here. 
J. M. Brown is its president; J. S. 
Brown vice-president. The former is 
emphatically, as a business man, self- 
made. He began business here when 
Galveston was an insignificant place, and 
he has grasped all the possibilities that 
were unfolded in his pursuit, by its 
growth. He has been a busy man, but 
he has still found time for other invest- 
ments, and is a large owner in many of 
the local enterprises. His residence here 



streets. The five views accompanying 
this matter illustrate the interior arrange- 
ments and very complete appointments 
of this establishment. On the first floor 
the retail salesrooms and offices cover 
44 by I20 feet. These departments are 
handsomely fitted up in walnut, with 
show cases for musical instruments of 
every description, and shelving for sheet 
music and musical works of all kinds. 
The mail order department is also on 
this floor. 

The second floor is reached bv a broad 




is one of the finest examples in the city, 
of the luxurious old-fashioned Southern 
home. He has been a representative 
merchant since the earliest period of 
Galveston's real development, a time 
antedating the war, and his son follows 
in his footsteps in patient and diligent 
attention to the affairs of the solid enter- 
prise which the elder created, but to 
which the younger is as much devoted. 

Thomas Goggan & Bro., the most 
notable house of Texas in the music trade, 
have their headquarters at Galveston in a 
building owned by them and situated 
corner of Market and Twenty-second 



and elegantly finished staircase. This 
department is devoted exclusively to the 
display of the stock of pianos and organs 
carried by the house, and as many as 150 
instruments can frequently be seen in it, 
among them the finest Steinway, Weber, 
Mathusek and Hale pianos, and Mason & 
Hamlin and Kimball organs. There is 
an apartment on this floor for tuning pur- 
poses, and a room designed for the use of 
music teachers and their pupils. Special 
attention has been given to the lighting 
and ventilation of these rooms. 

The third floor, is in area, the same as 
the rest, but it is divided into three rooms^ 



90 



f 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 

T 



fi \\^JT^ 




rf_ 







-/ J5t rioor- Sheet Music and General Retail Salesroom 




A Galveston, Texas 

ni\. » 






two of them 20 by 70 feet each. One of 
these is utilized for the storage of the very 
complete wholesale stock of musical 
wares, merchandise and instruments of 
the house. Another, as the engraving 
shows, is the workshop of the house, the 
most thoroughly equipped in the South. 
All the tools used in the craft have been 



provided for it, and a supply of everything 
necessary for the repair of pianos, organs 
and other instruments, is kept on hand in 
it. A corps of skilled workmen is 
engaged in it the year x^ound. The 
remainder of this floor is resei'ved for 
bulky goods, packing cases, etc. 

The building is of brick, substantially 




I 

MmfL 

Galvestoa JexaT 



p Piano and Or$an Wareroom 2 -Floor. 




THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



91 




built by the firm, expressly for the busi- 
ness they do. It has its elevator, water 
cisterns, and every modern appliance to 
facilitate trade. The house has been 
engaged in business here for nearly twen- 
ty-five years, and since it was first estab- 
lished has survived no less than fifteen 
competitors. It has successively estab- 



lished branches at Houston, San Antonio, 
Waco, Austin and other thriving cities of 
Texas, and has acquired prestige among 
the music houses of the South. Its name 
is a guarantee for the instruments sold by 
it, for its policy has been to recommend 
them for just what they are. Sales are 
made by it, either for cash or on easy 




92 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



terms, as low as by any house North or 
South. 

W. H. Pollard & Co., Water street, 
Brick levee, foot of Nineteenth street, are 
importers direct and dealers in masons' 
and plasterers' material, nine years estab- 
lished. Mr. Pollard started with a part- 
ner, but about four years ago bought him 
out, continuing, however, under the old 
firm name. He has had a successful 
experience in the business and is now ex- 
tending his field as fast as circumstances 



in lime, cement, sidewalk and ornamen- 
tal tiling, fire brick, sand, hair, slate roof- 
ing, drain pipe, soapstone finish, marble 
dust, etc. He handles first-class materials 
only, carries a large stock and does an 
excellent business. 

He hails originally from Cornwall, 
England, but has lived here since 1869 
and was first engaged in market garden- 
ing here. A few years after his arrival, 
however, he took an agency for Cedar 
Bayou brick, and so drifted into the line 




I'gVto'E'^Gb^H'JO 



W. H. I'OLLAkl.'s lUILDlNl. MAIKRIAL WAR KllUlhE. 



will permit, into the West, with which, 
relations, fostered by now mutually 
dependent interests, are rapidly being 
cemented. His location is unexcelled 
here for shipping and receiving purposes. 
He is at the wharf where cargoes can be 
discharged, with railroad and side track 
immediately adjoining, where ship and 
rail, in fact, meet. 

Mr. Pollard is agent for Wright's Cedar 
Bayou brick, the best building brick in 
this market, for the Dyckerhoff and 
Wm. Leavitt & Co.'s, Castle brand, and 
other Portland cements ; is a large dealer 



he follows. He owns property here and 
is one of the most enterprising business 
men of Galveston. 

A. J. Perkins & Co., lumber dealers, 
corner of Twenty-seventh and Strand, do 
a very large business ; are one of the most 
important lumber firms of the State, in 
fact. Mr. Perkins is a storekeeper of 
Lake Charles, La., and is also interested 
in the saw mill of Perkins & Miller, from 
which the Galveston yards of his firm are 
supplied ill part. The firm also owns an 
interest in a logging railroad in the Lake 
Charles district, which is one of the most 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



93 



productive of the lumber regions of the 
South. Mr. C. H. Moore, the resident 
and managing partner, is a partner in 
Lock, Moore & Co., lumbermen of Lake 
Chai'les, and also in a lumber mill at Wal- 
lisville, Texas. Mr. Perkins is a wealthy 
man and devotes himself to other affairs 
in which he has money invested. Mr. 
Moore is an experienced lumber dealer, 
and he gives an almost undivided atten- 
tion to the concerns of A. J. Perkins & 
Co. here. 

He is a man of high standing in the 
community and is a stockholder in a num- 
ber of local enterprises. He came here 
from California in 1867, and was at first 
engaged, for several years, in the sash, 
door and blind trade. In 1878 his place 
was destroyed by fire, and he afterwards 
was a partner in W. F. Stewart & Co.. 
lumber dealers. In 1881 he severed that 
connection and formed a partnership with 
Mr. Perkins. They formerly handled 
sash, doors, blinds, etc., but now deal 
only in lumber and shingles, the cut of the 
Lake Charles and other concerns already 
mentioned. 

They make a specialty of railroad con- 
tracts and are shippers to Mexico and all 
along the Gulf coast. They have about 
$50,000 invested in their business here 
and are doing about $300,000 of sales a 
year. They employ several hundred men 
in the various enterprises of logging, lum- 
bering, mills, etc. Their yards here cover 
very nearly an entire block. 

Byrne & Jones, lumber dealers, hand- 
ling also doors, sash, blinds and builders' 
hardware, at Twenty-ninth and Mechanic 
streets, have been established about six 
years. They were raised in the business 
here and have a thorough knowledge of 
it. Many of the building contractors of 
the city are their customers and they have 
quite a patronage besides in different parts 
of the State, chiefly along the line of the 
railroads running out from here. 

The partners in these yards, Messrs. 



J. P. Byrne and J. C. Jones, are natives of 
the city, long known here in both social 
and business circles. They are progres- 
sive and energetic, and their house is 
rising in importance among the solid con- 
cerns of the city. Mr. Byrne attends to 
all the outside affairs of his firm, Mr. 
Jones to the office, finances and accounts. 

Wm. Schadt, dealer in doors, sash, 
blinds, mouldings, stair work, builders' 
hardware, paints, oils, etc., at Mechanic 
and Twenty-eighth streets, is successor to 
Wm. F. Stewart & Co., a house of the 
same character established in 1874. He 
was himself formerly engaged in the 
lumber business here, and in 18S8 he 
bought out, besides Stewart & Co., the 
sash and blind business of A. J. Perkins 
& Co., and of Byrne & Jones. At the 
same time, he sold Byrne & Jones his 
lumber business. He began here in the 
lumber and building materials trade. In 
1S68, with C. H. Moore & Co. and has 
followed the business ever since. 

Mr. Schadt has about $30,000 invested 
in a very complete stock, and is doing an 
excellent business, not in Galveston alone, 
but also in all the adjacent country. He 
has several valuable and profitable agen- 
cies, among them that for the Chicago 
Rubber Paints Co.'s specialty, ready 
mixed rubber paints. He has had strong 
competition to meet in building up his 
business but is now thoroughly established 
in the confidence and favor of a large 
patronage. 

He came to Galveston in his childhood, 
and has spent all his life here except the 
four years of war, during which he served 
the Confederacy in Hood's Brigade and 
was in all the engagements in which that 
command participated. He was wounded 
at Chickamauga, and in the battles of the 
Wilderness several times, and was cap- 
tured at Darbytown ; and while he was 
still under parole as a prisoner of war 
the civil conflict ended. He is a man of 
some property here outside his business, 



94 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



is a director of the Island City Savings 
Bank, a stockholder in the Citizens Loan 
Co. and in the Texas Standard Cotton Oil 
Co. of this city also. 

The Redfield Compaxv, dealers in 
builders' material, at 171 Mechanic street, 
are State agents for the J. E. Bolles & 
Co. wire and iron works, Detroit, Mich., 
William Willer's celebrated inside sliding 
blinds, Milwaukee, Wis. ; the New York 
Architectural Terra Cotta Co., the A. A. 
Griffing iron works, Jersey City, N. J., 
manufacturers of the Bundy radiators, 
Wm. B. Dunning, Geneva, N. Y., in- 
ventor and manufacturer of the Dunning 
boiler for steam and hot water heating ; 
the Warner Elevator Manufacturing Co., 
Cincinnati, Ohio ; the Van Duzen Gas 
Engine Co., Cincinnati, Ohio; the Gum- 
mey-Speiring Co., Philadelphia and Liver- 
pool, tin plate and metal shingles, and a 
number of other large manufacturers in 
building material. They are the only 
firm in the United States that controls an 
entire State for the sale of the Wilier 
inside sliding blinds. 

They now do a business aggregating 
over $350,000 per annum, and rapidly 
increasing, and their trade extends all 
over Texas ; they have also a large trade 
in Arkansas, Louisiana and the Republic 
of Mexico. 

Mr. E. F. Redfield, the president and 
general manager of the company, came 
from Tennessee to Texas in 1872. He 
had previously been engaged in business 
in Nashville and Jasper, in that State ; he 
is a veteran of four years' service in the 
C. S. A., is the president of the Journal 
of Commerce Co. here, and is a very 
enterprising and energetic business man, 
well known and well liked all over Texas. 

Edmond Browne, slater and whole- 
sale dealer in roofing slate, at Houston 
and Galveston, has his ofiice and yards 
here at Twenty-first street and Avenue A. 
He is the pioneer in his business in Texas, 
and the only dealer of anv note in the two 



cities in which he has establishments. 
He has been in this line in this part of the 
country since 1865, and was in it before 
that, in Pennsylvania, his native State, 
He has fifteen hands steadily employed 
here, on both new and old work, and has 
about $30,000 invested in the business. 
He is also a member of the wholesale 
grocery firm of J. W. Haskins & Co. of 
Houston, and has accumulated considera- 
ble property in the city on Buffalo Bayou. 
He does work in all parts of Texas and 
frequently also in Eastern Louisiana, and 
is a shipper of the stock he deals in to all 
points in Galveston's trade territory. 

The Galveston Coal Company, 
which has yards and offices on Strand, 
between Nineteenth and Twentieth streets, 
has a trade of very large proportions. It 
is a dealer in both anthracite and bitumin- 
ous coals, and handles steam, blacksmith- 
ing and domestic varieties in very great 
quantity. Its receipts are from English, 
Pennsylvania, Alabama and Colorado 
mines, and its shipments are to places as far 
distant as those of Arkansas, Kansas and 
Mexico, as well as those in Texas and adja- 
cent Louisiana. 

This company was organized in 1873. 
Capt. Robert Irvine, capitalist of this city, 
is its president; C. L. Beissner, capitalist 
and Capt. Irvine's partner in lighterage 
and other business affairs here, and also a 
very substantial man, is treasurer, and F. 
C. Jefferey manager. Mr. Jefferey has 
been managing this business for fifteen 
years. 

Park & McRae, wholesale coal deal- 
ers, corner of Twentieth and Strand, are 
handling eight or ten thousand tons of 
coal now a year, and expect to complete 
arrangements, during the current year, by 
which they will have forty to fifty thou- 
sand tons to dispose of, and thus become 
the leading coal dealers at Galveston. 
They will then^make an addition to their 
yards, at the wharf below them, 300 x 100 
feet, and will put up an elevator having 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



95 



600 tons daily capacity to handle Alabama 
coal consigned to them by the Export 
Coal Co. of Pensacola, for whom they 
will be exclusive agents. They will con- 
tinue, however, to handle, as at present, 
anthracite and foreign coals. 

This firm runs nineteen teams for city 
delivery, and has quite a Texas trade 
besides. They handle building and filling 
sand largely also, and have a contract 
with the city to do all the grading and fill- 
ing of the streets. 

Mr. Park was formerly engaged here 
in the wholesale grocery business, and is 
now a member of the firm of H. N. Con- 
nor & Co., book and stationery dealers of 
Ft. Worth, although a resident here. Both 
he and Mr. McRae are, as this account 
discloses, enterprising business men ; in 
fact, they may be taken as excellent repre- 
sentatives of the younger generation of 
Galveston merchants. Mr. McRae came 
here from Richmond, Va., in 1870, and 
after a short time spent in banking and 
insurance embarked in business with Mr. 
Park. They both own property here and 
are confident from their own experiences 
that Galveston's future is hardly yet fore- 
shadowed. 

Chas. Dalian, importer and wholesale 
dealer in wines and liquors on Market 
street between Twenty-fourth and Twen- 
ty-fifth, is a Parisian by birth, but has 
been in the liquor trade in this country 
since 1S53, and in business for himself 
since 1857. He was in it at New Orleans 
for thirteen years before he came here in 
1865, and established himself. 

He makes a specialty of fine goods and 
importations and besides the patronage of 
most of the retail dealers of the city has 
a State trade. He is agent for the Due 
de Montebello champagnes, and for J. M. 
Harper and A. H. Meyers' Schuylkill 
malt, and he imports direct, celebrated 
English whiskies, Bordeaux clarets and 
other French wines and cordials of all 
kinds. Among other specialties he handles 



Peychaud, Ballou and other bitters, and 
Wm. J. Lemp's St. Louis beer. In short, 
he carries the finest kind of an imported 
and domestic stock of high priced goods 
for which his house is known to be head- 
quarters, throughout the State. He sel- 
dom has less than a $25,000 stock on 
hand and frequently more, and he does a 
business of fully $100,000 a year. He 
is agent also for Lescarret & Co.'s Bor- 
deaux line of sailing packets which call 
here at intervals. 

Mr. Dalian is the oldest of the local 
jobbers of liquors, that is to say, the 
longest established. He has been quite 
successful in his business and has accumu- 
lated a considerable estate, part of which 
is the property known as Dalian's Gar- 
dens on the beach, a place frequented by 
the best people of Galveston. He is also 
a stockholder in a number of the local 
enterprises and industries. 

The Protection Oil Co., under which 
name Messrs. C. B. Pettit & Co. have 
been doing business here for a number of 
years, has its place of business at 2128 
Market street. This company is engaged 
in the trade in illuminating and lubricating 
oils, and lamps, lanterns and burnei's of 
all kinds. One of the proprietors (Mr. 
C. W. Robinson) is established in Hous- 
ton and the house has branches and repre- 
sentatives in other parts of the State. 
The headquarters of the company is at 
New Orleans, and its affairs there are 
managed by President Pettit. 

The Galveston house, known generally 
as C. B. Pettit & Co., is managed by Mr. 
G. R. Christie, a native of this city. A 
hot competition waged against the Pro- 
tection, by the Texas representatives of 
the Standard Oil Co., has been met by the 
Protection with so much spirit, that of 
late its greater rival has somewhat abated 
its efforts. The specialty of the Protec- 
tion Company is its " Ursoleum " brand, 
a 150 degree illuminating oil, but a very 
extensive business is done by it in bulk 



96 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



and barrel oils of all kinds, in gasoline 
iind oil stoves, hanging and standing 
lamps, burners and chimneys, sold chiefly 
here, and by mail order in the trade terri- 
tory of the city. 

Palmer & Rev, type founders and 
press builders, of San Francisco, the larg- 
est printers' supply house on the Pacific 
coast, have been established for over thirty 
years, and are incorporated with $500,000 
capital. They have branches in Portland, 
Oregon, and Los Angeles, Cal., and in 
Galveston, the latter established in May, 
1S89, and under the management of O. 
Paget, a printer and newspaper man of 
twenty years' experience. The company 
has established a branch house in Dallas 
also, with Capt. J. O. Stanage as man- 
ager ; but the State trade is to be done 
from here ; and also a business in Eastern 
Louisiana, New Mexico and Mexico. 

Palmer & Rey have a very large foun- 
dry and machine shops in San Francisco, 
and are manufacturing there the "Califor- 
nia Reliable" job press and "California 
Reliable" cylinder press, which have 
taken many premiums at State fairs, nota- 
bly at the Dallas Exposition of 1889. They 
handle printers' material of all kinds, and 
carry at the branches, as well as in the 
parent concern, a large stock of these and 
of inks of all kinds. They have leased a 
large building here, and have laid in a 
complete assortment of all the articles in 
their specimen book, and they contemplate 
a venture here soon, employing 150 hands, 
a full account of which will be given in a 
later edition of this work. 

They circulate also a monthly, contain- 
ing information of interest to those who 
follow the art preservative — the Pacific 
Printer. Their place is on Strand, be- 
tween Twenty-second and Twenty-third. 

B. R. Davis & Bro., wholesale and 
retail dealers in furniture and carpets, on 
Market street, between Twenty-fourth and 
Twenty-fifth, carry a larger stock and do 
a larger business than anv house in the 



State, They own and occupy a three- 
story building, which is '$)6^ 120 feet, and 
this is stocked with as complete lines as 
can be found in one establishment any- 
where in this country, the whole valued 
at $125,000. 

The house has been in business for 
thirty-two years and is known wherever 
Galveston has trade. B. R Davis, who 
founded it, is dead, but his interest is held 
by his relict, and the business is managed 
by the surviving pai'tner, J. P. Davis, who 
has been one of the firm since 1865. He 
is a Pennsylvanian by birth but a resident 
here from his youth, and is a man thor- 
oughly posted in all the details of the fur- 
niture trade. He gives an undivided 
attention to the affairs of the house, which 
are many and various. It has sixteen 
salesmen, besides other employes. 

Baldinger Bros., corner of Mechanic 
and Twenty-second streets, are leading 
dealers in crockery, glassware, house- 
furnishing wares and goods, baby car- 
riages, bicycles, etc., doing both a whole- 
sale and retail business, and having a 
large jobbing trade in Texas and Western 
Louisiana, and a ^particularly good local 
retail patronage. The house is one of the 
oldest in any line hei^e. It was established 
in 1843 by the father of its present pro- 
prietor, and has been located on the same 
property since 1850. It was originally a 
grocery house, dealing in crockery and 
glassware incidentally, but after the war 
the present line was adopted by its foun- 
der. 

The building occupied by this house is 
a three-story brick. Besides that two 
warehouses are required for the stock, 
which is one of as much variety as is 
usually found in the large cities. It 
includes imported as well as domestic 
wares, and is especially complete in all 
the requisites of domestic economy and 
ornamentation. 

E. E. Baldinger, a son of the founder of 
the house, is principal in the management 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



97 



of the business. He is a native of the 
city and has been in the trade from his 
youth up. 

J, J. ScHOTT, druggist, at 317 and 219 
Market street, established himself first in 
that line here in 1S67, and was entirely 
successful in it. He sold out in 1S85 to 
Tarrant & King, so as to engage in 
manufacturing specialties, but bought his 
successors out in 18S8, and returned to 
his original business. 

He has, in all probability, the largest 
retail drug house in the South. He has 
six prescription clerks besides his regular 
salesmen, and his stock is as varied as can 
be found anywhere. He is sales agent 
for a large number of specialties, among 
the rest, Bucklin's remedies, Humphrey's 
and Boericke & Tafel's homoeopathic 
medicines. Hawk's spectacles, Johann 
Hoff's malt extract, the "Woodcock" 
rye, and the Irondequoit Wine Co.'s 
preparations of claret, port and sherry, 
packed especially for druggists. 

His own specialties are numerous. 
Schott's marking ink is used largely in all 
the cotton States, for marking cotton. 
Schott's cologne is preferred by many to 
the imported article. It sells as far away 
as New England. He manufactures, also, 
extracts, oils and essences, tonics, lotions, 
tooth powders, and a number of proprie- 
tary remedies, which have preference with 
the trade for their selling qualities, and he 
handles about everything known in the 
business in the way of sundries, in the 
various departments of his place. 

Many prescriptions received by mail 
are filled in this establishment, and goods 
are sent from it to all parts of Texas. 

Wiley & Nicholls, warehousemen 
and forwarding agents, cornier of Nine- 
teent sti-eet and Strand, make a specialty 
of heavy hauling, and run seven three- 
mule floats for that purpose. They num- 
ber among their patrons many of the 
principal business houses of the city, and 
they do considerable business for shippers 



of all parts of the country. They have 
five storage sheds for their warehouse and 
forwarding business on the block back of 
their offices; these are I30 by 100, or 
about 350 feet square. They employ 
fifteen or twenty hands the year round. 

As forwarders they do considerable 
business for safe, agricultural machinery 
and implement manufacturers, and their 
facilities and exj^erience both for these are 
excellent. Mr. Wiley followed the sea, 
as master of vessels, until he came here 
some ten years ago, and then accepted a 
position with Geo. M. Steirer & Co., in 
this same line ; and Mr. Nicholls was like- 
wise a mariner before he took up a resi- 
dence here and obtained the place of 
warehouseman with Steirer & Co. About 
two years ago they formed a partnership 
and bought out their employers. Steirer 
& Co. were the successors to R. P. Sar- 
gent & Co., who succeeded to the business 
of N. H. Ricker & Co., established in 
1869, so that the business of Wiley & 
Nicholls has been established now for over 
twenty years. 

J. Levy & Bro. have the largest livery 
and sales stables here, and an undertaking 
establishment connected with it, and have 
also sales stables in St. Louis at 1446 
Broadway. Their undertaking depart- 
ment here is on Winnie street between 
Twenty-first and Twenty-second. They 
have an experienced manager and funeral 
director employed there, and four hearses, 
eight carriages and sixteen horses used for 
no other purpose. 

Their general sale and livery stables are 
on Church sti'eet between Twenty-second 
and Twenty-third. Here they have twenty 
carriages, buggies, etc., and fifty riding 
and driving horses. They have about 
$50,000 invested in the business in Gal- 
veston, and do $150,000 of trade a year. 
They are also the lai-gest dealers in car- 
riages, buggies, harness, etc., in the city, 
and always have a large stock of these 
on hand in their salesroom and warehouse. 



98 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



Mr. Ben Levy manages affairs here, 
Mr. Joe Levy in St. Louis. They came 
heie in 1865 and were in mercantile busi- 
ness at first, but have been in this line 
solely since 1867 or 186S. 

C. D. Holmes, jobbing and retail gro- 
cer and dealer in ship stores, feed and 
seeds, has been a resident of Galveston 
for forty-one years, and has been in busi- 
ness here since 1865. He has been a 
member of the Board of Health, and active 
always in public affairs, and he is intei-ested 
in street railroad and other local projects, 
besides his business. 

Mr. Holmes has a large trade with the 
shipping frequenting this port, and does 
considerable as a contractor supplying 
the government. His local retail trade 
employs three delivery wagons, and his 
seed trade, mostly with country patrons, 
is by no means insignificant. His place 
of business is on Market street, between 
Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth. 

The Mercantile Agency of R. G. 
Dun & Co., which was established in 
New York in 1841, has nine branches in 
Texas ; namely, Galveston, Houston, 
Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, 
Waco, Sherman and El Paso. One of 
the district offices is located here, and is 
managed by Mr. Edward H. Gorse. who 



has the southern half of the State under 
his charge. His district embraces the 
cities of Galveston, Houston, Austin and 
San Antonio. Mr. Gorse is well qualified 
by experience and ability to serve the 
firm's patrons. 

The Mercantile Agency publishes a 
reference book, containing the names of 
1,200,000 business firms in the United 
States and Canada, with markings for 
credit and capital. Among the special 
advantages of this reference book are the 
State maps, especially engraved and re- 
garded minutely correct, and the postal 
and shipping guides prepared for the con- 
venience of the mercantile community. 

The Agency has a special department, 
devoted to the collection of past due 
claims, and their business in this direction 
is very heavy in the aggregate. No 
organization in the country collects so 
large an amount, and the system is thor- 
oughlv organized. Its attorneys are 
under bond, and the charges reasonable. 

The main office of R. G. Dun & Co. is 
in New York city, and there are 132 
branches in the United States, Canada and 
Europe. The office here is located at 
Strand and Twenty-third streets, the Gal- 
veston National Bank building, a block 
only from the Union Depot. 




MANUFACTURING PROGRESS OF THE CITY. 




EW life has been im- 
parted to the indus- 
tries of Galveston, 
and a new spirit 
infused in the peo- 
ple by the provision 
of an ample water 
supply. New fac- 
established, old ones 
capital has been 
particularly large 
jute bagging mills, 
cotton rope walk. 



tories have been 

enlarged ; and local 

embarked in three 

mechanical ventures : i 

a cotton mills and a 

the first already in successful operation, 

the second just built and equipped, and 

the last now building. 

This same forward spirit is exhibited in 
other lines of production also. It can be 
seen in soap, candy, clothing, patent medi- 
cine, wool scouring, oyster packing and 
other concerns of recent foundation. The 
growth of the packing industry has been 
particularly notable ; several good-sized 
can factories have been upbuilt by it. It 
was in the demand for factory sites at the 
West End of the city, that the first impulse 
originated, which has enlivened so much of 
late, the Galveston real estate market. 

Galveston, easily first among Texas 
cities in trade and wealth, is foremost also 
m manufactures. Statistics compiled by 
the publishers of the city directory, 
Messrs. Morrison & Fourmy, show i6i 
manufacturing establishments, not count- 
ing minor concerns and building and other 
contractors, and $5,003,800 of capital 
invested in them. This would indicate 
over 3,000 pei'sons employed, $1,375,000 
of wages paid during the year, and a 
gross product of $7,500,000 a year, and 
at twenty per cent average profit, $1,500,- 
000 of gross returns from the industries, 
sums considerably in excess of the claims 



made for Dallas, the next most important 
trade center of the State. 

Making reasonable allowance for the 
items not counted in the table of the direc- 
tory, it is safe to say that Galveston, 
miscellaneous concerns, building and con- 
tractors' work included, has $6,000,000 
of capital invested in the productive 
industries, and $10,000,000 of annual pro- 
duct. This is a hundred per cent of 
increase since 1S85. 

The 161 concerns of the directory table 
make 50 classifications, a number ex- 
hibiting the variety and diversity of the 
industries of the city. The most import- 
ant, as indicated by the capital employed 
and hands engaged, are the cotton com- 
presses, the bagging factory, the cotton 
factory, the cotton oil mills, the flour and 
grist mills, the oyster packeries, the rope 
walk and the ice and printing works. 
These industries have a total capitaliza- 
tion of $3,400,000 alone and fifteen hun- 
dred of the population get a livelihood 
from them. 

Other industries, important by reason 
of the capital embarked in them, and the 
number of their employes, are the follow- 
ing: Foundries, machine and boiler 
works, for which $75,000 capital is esti- 
mated ; railroad shops, $36,000; sheet 
iron and tin work, $72,000; clothing, 
$30,000; soap, $50,000; crackers and 
candy, $93,000; coffee, $35,500; soda 
water, $33,500; patent medicines, $28,- 
000; wool scouring, $35,000; marble 
works, $35,000; cooperage, $35,000; 
cisterns, $31,000; planing mills, $50,000; 
marine railway, $35,000; saddlery, $16,- 
800; vinegar, $10,000; trunks, $10,000. 
The gas works of the city represents an 
investment of $400,000, and the three 
electric light plants $150,000. 



100 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



WATER FOR MANUFACTURES. 

While the growth of the city in manu- 
factures is to be ascribed largely to the 
success of the artesian experiments, other 
forces also accelerate it. Some of it arises 
from local necessity, and much also fi'om 
the accruing advantages of an enlarged 
commercial sphere, which has cheapened 
material and fuel, provided enlarged 
transportation facilities, and stimulated 
enterprise. As the venture which has 
quickened production most, however, the 
Galveston Artesian Well Company 
is the most interesting of all the city's 
later projects. 

Before this company was organized 
progress was measurably retarded by an 
insufficient water supply. Cisterns for 
rain water were the sole dependence of 
the householder and the manufacturer. 
Many plans were proposed to surmount 
this obstacle to industrial advancement, 
as, for instance, the expensive scheme of 
piping water from the mainland ; but, as 
in that particular case, the difficulties 
attending them discouraged the attempt. 
Efforts had already been made too to 
strike the underground reservoirs of the 
Island : but they only resulted in failure ; 
and the issue of this adventure, is there- 
fore, regarded here, in the light of an 
achievement, the tapping, literally, of a 
well spring of prosperity for Galveston. 

Over twenty deep artesian wells have 
been sunk in Galveston, and others are 
projected or in progress, and it has been 
demonstrated beyond a peradventure, that 
any quantity of water desired can be 
readily obtained from these subteiTanean 
sources at a reasonable expense. This 
company has drilled fourteen wells here 
thus far ; they vary in depth from 800 to 
1,350 feet, and the deepest naturally have 
the strongest flow. Their capacity is as 
follows : Galveston Cotton Seed Oil Co., 
450,000 gallons in twenty-four hours ; 
Galveston Cold Storage and Ice Co. (two 



wells), 600,000 gallons; Galveston Bag- 
ging and Cordage Co., 310,000 gallons; 
Galveston Electric Light Co., 50,000 gal- 
lons ; Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe shops, 
40.000 gallons ; eight city wells, 3.400,000 
gallons. The city has sunk also five other 
wells, on payment of a royalty, with this 
company's machinery. These five have 
about 500,000 gallons capacity, and one 
or two other wells here, make the flow 
from the artesian sources of supply be- 
tween 4,500,000 and 5.000,000 gallons in 
twenty-four hours, an amount that can be 
increased a third, at least, by pumping. 

From the successive strata encountered 
in boring these wells, it is evident that the 
island has been formed by slow accretions 
of marine debris, deposited in layers of 
clay and sand, or mixed clay and sand, 
one upon another, until it finally rose 
above the gulf. The water veins are in 
the layers of sand, one at 795 feet from 
the surface, one at 910 feet (on the west 
side of the island only), providing a 
bountiful flow, and one, the best vein of 
all, and the one having the strongest 
pressure, at 1.346 feet, the greatest depth 
yet reached by the drill on the island. 

The company has $25,000 of its $50,000 
authorized capital paid up, and complete 
facilities for the business, including three 
complete sets of rock tools, two sets of 
hydraulic tools, and experienced employes, 
It was organized in 1SS7. J. W. Byrnes 
is president and general manager ; B. 
Adoue treasurer, and W. H. Sinclair, 
postmaster of the city, secretary. It is 
now engaged in sinking wells at Laredo, 
on the Mexican border, for the Laredo 
Improvement Company, and has contracts 
for work in other parts of the State also. 

Besides this of its water supply, Gal- 
veston has other advantages for manufac- 
tures. It has a progressive community 
appreciative of the advantages derived 
from industrial enterprise, and possessed 
of the surplus capital to embark in them. 
It has cheap building sites, and low taxes. 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



101 



It is a seaport, and as such a market for 
foreign, Pennsylvania and Alabama coals, 
a fuel supply which, ere long will be sup- 
plemented by the product of Central and 
Southern Texas, where extensive fields 
are just being exploited. It has, in its 
rapidly populating trade territory of Texas 
assurance at one and the same time, of an 
expanding market, and a plentiful labor 
supply, and in the resources of this same 
tributary field, a superabundance of raw 
material. And it has a climate permitting 
operations the year round, 

Texas alone can supply it the cotton 
and wool for manufacture of fabrics, the 
wheat and corn and oats for breadstuffs, 
the beeves and fruits and fish and oysters 
for packing and canning, the timber for 
house work and furniture and wagons, 
the hides for tanning, the horns and bone 
for minor industries. Texas alone could 
supply it with iron from its fields in Llano 
and other central counties of the State, with 
copper, marble and granite, cement, gyp- 
sum, guano and sugar, to make it one of 
the world's greatest centers of production. 

Texas, said the Galveston News some 
time ago, is sacrificing 33)3 -per cent of 
the profits on its cotton crops by paying 
transportation charges and shipping them 
abroad to be manufactured, somewhat 
moi-e on wool, and 50 per cent at least on 
hides ; not to speak of the incidental fea- 
tures of packing, harness making, fer- 
tilizers, etc. The saving possible on a 
single year's cotton crop by home manu- 
facture, it calculated, would be $20,000,- 
xxxD, enough to establish mills all over the 
State. Twenty cotton mills might be 
operated at Galveston as well as one, so 
far as material is concerned, and in this 
respect it might easily be made the rival 
of Fall River. The opportunities for 
manufactures generally, in a city which is 
looked to for supplies by the most rapidly 
settling region of the Union, indeed, are 
limited only by special circumstances of 
competition. 



NEW ENTERPRISES SKETCHED. 

Following are some of the more im- 
portant of the new Galveston manufac- 
turing establishments. 

The Island City Manufacturing 
Co. is one of the notable manufacturing 
concerns established recently, because of 
the encouraging prospects unfolded for 
Galveston by the provision of a permanent 
water supply, and other circumstances 
enhancing her advantages as a field for 
business enterprise. The principals in it 
ai'e gentlemen of long experience in trade 
here, and accustomed to the direction of 
affairs of importance : Messrs. M. J. 
Sass, who has been connected for years 
with Weis Bros., Block, Oppenhimer & 
Co. and their predecessors, Greenleve, 
Block & Co., in a trusted capacity, and 
L. Weis, a resident of Texas since 1858, 
and formerly one of the clothing firm of 
Levy & Weis. These are concerns among 
the most distinguished in Texas, certainly 
the foremost in clothing, gents' furnishing 
goods and kindred lines. 

They began in May, 1889, with a full 
equipment for the manufacture of pants, 
shirts, overalls and drawers, and have 
since developed trade in Texas, Louisiana, 
Arkansas, Old and New Mexico and 
Arizona. They are employing 125 to 150 
hands and have five men on the road sell- 
ing for them. They occupy three floors 
of a large building on Strand between 
Twenty- third and Twenty-fourth, the 
second floor for their oflices and sample 
rooms, the third for manufacturing pur- 
poses and the fourth for stock. Every- 
thing points to a speedy realization of their 
highest expectations with respect to their 
venture, and to the firm establishment of 
an industry of material benefit to the city. 
Both partners give an undivided atten- 
tion to the affairs of the business. Mr. 
Weis superintends the manufacturing 
details, and Mr. Sass devotes himself to 
the general affairs of management. 



102 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



The Galveston Cotton and Woolen 
Mills, the buildings for which aie now 
under construction, are perhaps the enter- 
prise biggest with the promise of progress 
for Galveston. Besides the livelihood 



shows, the structure will be one of im- 
posing character, and not without salient 
architectural features. It is to be of brick 
300 by 106 feet and four stories high, with 
an annex for a boiler house. Two high 







THE NEW COTTON MILLS, GALVESTON. 



they will afford to the laboring element of 
population and the incidental business 
they must make, they will further the 
centralization here of the traffic which is 
the life and soul of the port, the trade in 
cotton. To an appreciable extent, they 
will be an advantage also to all the State. 
This enterprise, like the water wells, also 
originated with Galveston residents and is 
promoted entirely with Galveston capital. 
The Cotton and Woolen Mills company 
was incorporated in 1889, and work was 
begun on the factory buildings soon after. 
A site was chosen in the western outskirts 
of the city, at Fortieth street and avenue 
G, and construction has so far progressed 
that it is confidently expected that the 
mills will be in operation by midsummer 
of 1890. As the engraving on this page 



towers will dignify its front elevation and 
a massive octagonal chimney 154 feet high 
in the rear, will likely make it one of the 
landmarks of the city. 

It will have 25,000 spindles and 750 
looms, and will furnish employment to 
360 hands, who, under the direction of 
Superintendent Lawrence V. Elder, an 
experienced man, will be engaged at first 
in production of medium weight domes- 
tics ; but the mill is equipped for manu- 
facture of the finer qualities of goods 
demanded in the Eastern markets, and 
these will also be produced as soon as a 
fair start has been made. 

The company has $500,000 authorized 
capital. Albert Weis of Weis Bros, 
is its president; B. Adoue, the banker, 
vice-president, and Julius Runge, cotton 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



103 



factor and city treasurer, secretary and 
treasurer. The directors are Messrs. 
Weis, Adoue and Runge, J. Reymers- 
hoffer, Wm. F. Ladd, M. Lasker and 
George Sealy, all of whom are sketched 
in connection with other concerns of 
importance in which they are interested 
here. 

The Galveston Bagging & Cordage 
Factory is one of those recently estab- 
lished enterprises of Galveston which tes- 
tify at once to the progress, the enterprise 
and the solid wealth of the city. The 
company operating this factory was 
organized in iSSS and has $250,000 cap- 
ital paid up, together with a mill that cost, 
with its site and machinery, $325,000. It 
employs 223 hands, and almost its entire 
product is taken by the Galveston mer- 
chants to supply the Texas demand for 
bagging. 

The factory and warehouses cover an 
entire block at Church and Winnie, Thir- 



mote the health and comfort of the op- 
eratives. The machinery, comprising 
thirty-five looms and the appurtenances 
for hackling and separating the fiber, 
engines, etc , is conceded an unexcelled 
equipment. It cost $125,000 and has all 
the latest improvements devised to save 
labor and expedite manufacture. 

The capacity of the mills is 4,000,000 
yards a year. The jute, originally grown 
in India, is bought in New York city and 
stoi^ed there for shipment as needed. A 
new warehouse is about to be constructed 
on the grounds here, however, especially 
to hold the raw material which the com- 
pany will shortly import direct. In con- 
nection with the bagging, the company 
handles also English ties, used with the 
bagging, for the baling of cotton. This 
item alone aggregates a matter of some 
3,000 tons a season. 

To describe the various processes pur- 
sued in turning the jute into bagging is 




GALVESTON BAGGING FACTORY. 



ty-third and Thirty-fourth streets. The 
building is considered one of the best in 
the country for the purpose. Its ventila- 
tion and accessories of bath, wash rooms, 
etc., have been especially designed to pro- 



hardly the province of these sketches. 
From the beginning, when the bales ai-e 
broken and put through the desiccating 
machinei'v, until the baling fabric issues 
from the sales departments, bearing the 



104 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



company's brand, the operations are many 
and the proceedings exceedingly intricate. 
It seems sufficient to say of the company 
that it supplies a large part of the covering 
used for the protection of the great staple 
of Texas, is doing an excellent business, 
and is, in respect of its management, con- 
ducted independently of any other similar 
venture here or elsewhere. Its resources, 
facilities and field permit it the utmost 
latitude for development and enlargement, 
and measures are being taken to in- 
crease its effectiveness. Machinery for 
making all kinds of twines will be in oper- 
ation by January i, 1890, and that part of 
the factory will employ nearly as many 
operatives as the departments for produc- 
tion of bagging. It is supererogatory, 
almost, to remark in this connection, that 
it has been of equal benefit, as a new 
industry and productive agency, to both 
Galveston and Texas. 

The officers of the company and prin- 
cipal stockholders are B. Adoue, the 
banker of this city, president; J. M. 
Brown, of the J. S. Brown Hardware Co., 
vice-president; W. F. Ladd, cotton factor 
and cotton shipper, secretary and treas- 
urer ; these gentlemen, with H. Kempner, 
cotton factor, and T. W. English, iron 
and coal dealer, directors. They are all 
men identified by property and social ties 
with the best interests of the city. 

ExLiNE & Gruendler's Galvcstou 
Wool Scouring Mills were established in 
the spring of '89 by Theodore Howard? 
in whose hands the venture was entirely 
experimental and not at all the marked 
success the present owners have made it. 
They put in machinery adapted to the 
business, and easily achieved the results 
he aimed at, but fell short of. The estab- 
lishment is, therefore, another confirma- 
tion of the progress of Galveston in manu- 
facturing industry. It may be considered, 
too, peculiarly a Galveston enterprise, for 
Messrs. Exline and Gruendler are residents 
of the city, and long in business here. 



Mr. Exline has been engaged in the 
cotton and wool trade here for over 
twenty years, and he is consequently an 
expert in matters pertaining to these 
Texas staples. It was he who bought out 
the hardware stock of E. S. Wood & 
Sons last year, on speculation, a transac- 
tion evincing his business characteristics. 
He is a native of Chicago, and came to 
Texas first as a Federal volunteer, one of 
the division of the heroic but ill-fated 
Custer. His partner, Mr. Gruendler, is 
a native of the city, and having likewise 
spent a lifetime in the trade in wool and 
hides, was far from a novice in lines like 
this allied to it ; although they both found 
it an entirely new undertaking, and until 
they had thoroughly established it gave it 
an undivided attention. 

They brought operatives from the 
North, and put in new machinery of a 
pattern appi'oved by trial, the Smith 
bowls, long in use and standard for wool 
scouring at Boston, and in other large 
centers of the trade. This machinery has 
capacity, when 26 to 30 men are em- 
ployed, which is their usual force, to 
clean 8,000 pounds of greased wool in ten 
hours. They are located in a two story 
building, 40x120 feet ground plan, on 
Strand, between Nineteenth and Twen- 
tieth, and have now the most ample 
facilities for a trade in wool, aggregating 
1.500,000 to 2,000,000 pounds a year. 

The machinery put in by them cost 
$15,000, the building about as much more. 
They have fully $50,000 of • capital in- 
vested in this plant and their business. 
They will buy from the wool factors in 
Galveston, and will sell chiefly to the 
New York brokers purchasing for Eastern 
manufacturers. They have men on the 
road also soliciting consignments. 

The processes through which the wool 
is put in this establishment are explained 
by the following description of their 
premises : The first floor is their engine 
room, and has in it also four Smith bowl 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



105 



scouring machines. The upper floor is 
used as a sorting, drying, "duster," 
"fur-picker," "breaking" and packing 
room. The wool, as it comes from the 
i-anch or warehouse, is first sorted and 
graded. Next it goes through the 
" duster, " a device whose name indicates 
its purpose It then passes through the 
bowls, which contain a cleansing liquor 
(the last of them pure water), and thence 
to a drying room, heated by steam to i30 
degrees Fahrenheit. Revolving rakes and 
other devices and rollers to press out the 
water, do the work. After drying it is 
re-sorted to detect irregularities, and then 
bagged for shipment, 

REPRESENTATIVE CONCERNS. 

The following sketches exhibit the 
characteristics of a representative number 
of Galveston's leading manufacturing 
enterprises, their methods, facilities, trade 
territory, history, principals and other 
facts likely to be interesting concerning 
them. 

The Texas Star Flour Mills, shown 
in the illustration on page 107, are 
among the largest, if indeed they are not 
the very largest concern of the kind, in 
the South. A special interest attaches to 
them too, for the reason that they are 
particularly a Galveston enterprise, an 
undertaking established by residents of 
progressive business characteristics, with 
their own money, and developed and 
upbuilt unassisted by these same princi- 
pals, from a venture of moderate propor- 
tions to one of the first rank among 
establishments of its class. 

The Messrs. Reymershoffer and their 
associates in these mills, are of German 
extraction, but they were raised in this 
State and are thoroughly imbued with the 
spirit and sentiment of the people of this 
section ; so that this enterprise of theirs 
is one of the many evidences that the 
restoration of the South, and its recent 



wonderful expansion, should be credited 
to the native and long-resident stock, 
whose innate energy, it must be admitted, 
has wrought the changes that have made 
the once war-wasted slave States a verit- 
able "New South." 

Some little personal mention of these 
gentlemen is necessary to a thorough 
comprehension of what they have accom- 
plished. John Reymershoffer, the father 
of the brothers engaged in management 
of the mills, came to Texas from Austria 
in 1854, bringing with him his wife, two 
sons and three daughters. He embarked 
in a general merchandising business in 
Colorado county before the war, and dur- 
ing it was also in business in Mexico. 
After the war the sons established them- 
selves here in the wholesale crockery and 
glassware business, as J. Reymershoffer' s 
Sons, and in 1870 converted their resources 
and interests so as to do business under 
the same name as general commission 
merchants, a line in which they still con- 
tinue to do a very considerable business. 

In 1878, the brothers, John and Gus 
Reymershoffer, although without previous 
milling experience, organized the Texas 
Star Flour Mills company. Lothar 
Becker, since deceased, a miller of expe- 
rience, and the inventor of several milling 
devices, C. Bothman and a few other of 
their Galveston friends, took stock with 
them. The incorporation had $50,000 
capital. They built a hundred barrel 
French buhr mill, enlarging it at intervals 
as their trade grew, until, in 1886, they had 
a daily output of 350 baiTels, and a well 
established reputation for their pi-oduct. 
The development of the business, and the 
general introduction of roller machinery 
throughout the country, decided them to 
build a new mill, and this was completed 
in 1887 and put in operation about the close 
of that year. Experts in mill construc- 
tion were employed to do the work, and 
provision was made for the anticipated 
continuance of growth. Machinery suffi- 



THE CITY O^'GALVESTOK 



107 



cient to run both the old and new mills 
was put in, so that the rapacity of the 
establishment now is 900 barrels a day. 

They had increased the capital of the 
company, meanwhile, in 1SS3, to $100,- 
000, and again, in 1S88, to $500,000, and 
had built, besides the new mill, a grain 
elevator of 400,000 bushels capacity, rig- 
ged with separators, conveyors, steam 
shovel anddOther facilities to receive 5,000 
bushels an hour and to discharge an equal 
quantity in the same time. They have in 
the new building also a twenty-five barrel 
plant for milling rye, and half the build- 
ing has been so arranged that they can put 
in the additional equipment necessary to 
make their capacity 1,300 barrels of flour 
daily, a step they already contemplate 
taking. 

So much for the history of this project ; 
now, as to the equipment and product. 
The new mill only is run at present, 
although the old one could be put in oper- 
ation if necessary. There are in this new 
mill sixteen double sets of Noye-Stevens 
rolls, sixteen Jonathan Mills reels and 
fourteen other reels for scalping and 
i"escalping, grading, etc. ; nine Smith puri- 
fiers with Prinz dust collectors and two 
extra dust collectors besides ; forty-nine 
stands of elevators, two bran dusters, one 
Homes & Ewell magnetic separator, two 
Silver Creek centrifugals, aspirating fans, 
stock hoppers, unlimited shafting, pulleys, 
etc., four Silver Ci'eek flour packers, and 
three Stevens' automatic scales, and the 
necessai-y cleaning machinery and receiv- 
ing separators, scourers, polishers and 
cockle machines of the latest pattern. 

The motive power is furnished by a 
compound condensing engine of 350 horse 
power and the requisite boiler capacity. 
The mill is lighted by an electric plant of 
225 lights. It is adjacent to the wharves 
and shipping and has its own side ti'ack. 
The elevator is chiefly used by the mills, 
but is at the service also of grain dealers 
and shippers. 



Following are the brands manufactured: 
Kaiser Auszng, Tidal Wave, Neptune, 
Gulf Stream, Thetis, Sea Fairy, Mermaid, 
Edelweiss, Sea Nymph, Undine, Jewel, 
Melite, Sea Pearl, Hera, Rye Flour, 
Pumpernickel and Graham. The wheat 
used is obtained in Texas, Kansas, 
St. Louis and California. The jobbers 
of Galveston and Houston are nearly all 
supplied by this mill. It has quite an 
export trade to Gulf coast markets atid 
would have a big West India business 
also if there were shipping facilities avail- 
able. 

The officers of the company and prin- 
cipals in its management are J. Reymer- 
shoffer, president ; G. Reymershoffer, 
vice-president, secretary and treasurer ; F. 
J. Becker, head miller ; J. C. Kirschner, 
chief clerk ; R. Hayes, chief engineer. 
The partners in the commission house of 
J Reymershoffer' s Sons, which has offices 
at the mills (Center and Water streets), 
are John and Gus Reymershoffer. They 
are the owners of the Reymershoffer 
building, corner of Mechanic and Twenty- 
second streets, and of other valuable 
property here ; and Mr. J. Reymershoffer 
IS a director of the Galveston Wharf Co., 
the First National Bank, and of the new 
Galveston Cotton and Woolen Mills. 

The Galveston Oil Mills, covering 
the entire square bounded by Strand, 
Water, Seventeenth and Eighteenth 
streets, and part besides of another, are 
the property of an association which has 
other large mills at Dallas, Houston, 
Waco, Palestine, Paris and Corsicana. 
Those here are operated by a stock com- 
pany of which B, Adoue is president, and 
J. L. Kane secretary. J. F. Jaques is 
superintendent of them. Fully $300,000 
is invested in the Galveston plant of this 
company. The mill building is one of 
the largest structures in the city and the 
equipment is a superior one. 

It has capacity to work 150 tons of cot- 
ton seed a day, from which the product is 



108 



TFIE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



lOO barrels of oil and 50 tons of cake. 
Nearly all this is exported, the oil to all 
parts of the world, the cake chiefly to 
Germany and England for use as stock 
feed. Considerable fertilizer is also pro- 
duced in the shape of refuse hulls. Sacks 
are furnished planters and the standard 
price is paid by the company for cotton 
seed. The works have a large gin house 
attached, and all told, employ, during the 
cotton season, probably 220 hands, whose 
wages make no small fraction of the cir- 
culating medium here. Indeed the mill 
is, from the value of its product, and its 
permanent character, one of the most 
beneficial of the manufacturing concerns 
of Galveston to all classes, laboring and 
commercial, in the city. 

The Lee Iron Works, corner of 
Thirty-second and Avenue G or Winnie 
street, is the largest foundry in both the 
city and State. The buildings and plant 
of these works cover half the block on 
which they are located, and this area, 150 
by 300 feet, is built up two stories high. 
The works ai'e equipped with the full 
complement of labor saving and mechan- 
ical devices, machine lathes, rollers, 
cranes, punches, etc., have a Sellers' pat- 
ent steam hammer, pattern shop, and 
every facility known to the trade. They 
have tools suitable for both heavy and 
light work, for architectural, steamship 
and railroad iron work and for saw mill, 
cotton press and sugar mill building; also 
for repairing steam engines and boilers of 
all kinds. They do more work for the 
Texas and Western Louisiana sugar dis- 
tricts and for the shipping frequenting this 
port, than any of their competitors. The 
foundry at these works has ten tons a day 
capacity. About $50,000 is invested in 
this plant, and sixty hands are regularly 
employed in them. 

These works had their inception in a 
small venture made here about the close 
of the war by three expert mechanics, 
C. B. Lee, D. Weber and Joshua Miller. 



Ten years later they had made enough to 
buy the plant of what was known as the 
Close Foundry : this they removed to the 
place now occupied by " the Lee." These 
same parties are the firm of C. B. Lee & 
Co., proprietors of the works. Mr. Lee 
is the managing member of the firm. 
Mr. Weber, who is a moulder by trade, 
superintends the foundry, and Mr. Miller 
the pattern and machine shops. 

As the patentee of the Lee Ice Machine, 
Mr. Lee has acquired the business of the 
Neptune Ice Company, an enterprise 
described on page 109 of this chapter. 
He is also interested in real estate here, 
and is now serving his third term as an 
alderman of the city. Mr. Weber has 
real estate investments also, acquired 
during the long and successful opei'ation 
of these works by himself and associates, 
and Mr. Miller likewise is well-to-do. 

Jesse Astall's West Strand Iron 
Works, were established by him in 1866 
and have been enlarged by him from time 
to time since. He had been in business 
before the war, but the peculiar conditions 
prevailmg here after hostilities were fairly 
commenced, forced him to abandon his 
trade. Starting again then when peace 
was restored, he has built himself up a 
handsome business, not only as machinist 
and founder, but as a dealer in mill, rail- 
road and plantation supplies. He has 
$25,000 or more invested in the business, 
and has sales of proportionate character 
and volume. Amongst other goods and 
wares of his line handled by him, the 
following are his specialties: iron pipe 
and fittings, valves and couplings, steam 
and hand pumps and injectors, vises, 
tongs, jet pumps, hose, belting and pack- 
ing, pullevs and hangers, flue cleaners, 
engines and boilers. Any of these he can 
furnish as promptly and as cheaply as any 
house in Texas. 

Mr. Astall's place is located on Strand 
street between Twenty-sixth and Twenty- 
seventh. 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



109 



The Neptune Ice Factory, estab- 
lished in 1883 by Alderman C. B. Lee of 
the Lee Iron Works, and R. F. George, 
has since, by incorporation, passed into the 
possession of a stock company of which 
J. H. Forbes, confectioner of Market 
street, is president and W. B. Wallis real 
estate agent, secretary, but Mr. Lee still 
retains his interest and operates the place 
as lessee of the plant and proprietor of 
the business. He is the patentee and 
manufacturer of the absorption machinery 
for making ice, with which the works are 
equipped, machinery notable from the 
fact that it was the first used to make ice 
successfully from salt water. 

When the company was organized the 
equipment was improved and the capacity 
of the works enlarged. There are now 
three ten ton machines in daily operation. 
In connection with the ice house two large 
refrigerating rooms of ample capacity 
have been prepared for cold storage, and 
beer, meats, cheese, butter and other per- 
ishables, can thus be preserved here at 
reasonable charges. During the summer 
this company finds it necessary to employ 
about twenty hands, and three delivery 
wagons are run the year round. The fac- 
tory is at Eighteenth street and Avenue A. 

Mr. Lee has been a resident of Galves- 
ton for thirty-four years and a business 
man and manufacturer of the city since 
1865. He is one of the proprietors of 
the Lee Iron Works, the largest here, and 
is now serving his fellow citizens, at their 
solicitation, for the third time as Alder- 
man. The invention and practical appli- 
cation of this ice machinery, the ability 
displayed by him in the conduct of his 
iron works, during twenty-five years past, 
and in the affairs entrusted him as a local 
legislator, stamp him a man of superior 
intelligence, enterprise and judgment. 

The Texas Ice and Cold Storage 
Co, is successor to the business of the 
Texas Ice Co., who, with their connections 
in other Southern ports, have been the 



largest dealers in Northern ice in the South 
for years. Since the successful issue of 
the artesian borings here, however, the 
importation of New England ice has prac- 
tically been abandoned, and, fortified with 
a natural flow of about 300,000 gallons a 
day, or 600,000 when the pump is applied, 
the equipment of this company for manu- 
facture of ice is ample for all ordinary 
purposes. This equipment (two H. D. 
Stratton absorption machines — one fifteen 
and the other twenty-five tons daily ca- 
pacity,) gives them facilities sufficient for 
the production of forty tons a day, and 
they have storage capacity for twenty-five 
car-loads. They employ twenty hands the 
year round and do the largest ice business 
in Texas. 

Ice is sold in car lots by this company, 
and special rates are made for large quan- 
tities. It is delivered also throughout the 
city. The company is agent also for the 
Anheuser-Busch Brewing Co., of St. 
Louis, the largest brewers in this country, 
and the one producing, unquestionably, 
the best beverage of the kind made in 
America. The company has $100,000 
capital stock and is located at Twentieth 
street and avenue A. Besides $12,000 
spent to get its water supply, more than 
three times that amount was expended on 
the equipment for ice making and cold 
storage, for which latter business a special 
department has been prepared, so as to 
accommodate dealers in perishables here. 

The officers of the company are Capt. 
Charles Fowler, agent here of the Morgan 
Line of steamers, president ; B. Adoue, 
of Adoue & Lobit, bankers, vice-presi- 
dent ; W. C. Ansell, secretary and treas- 
urer. Mr. Ansell conducts the business. 
He has been in the ice trade for the past 
twenty years. 

G. B. Marsan & Co., dealers in fresh 
fish and oysters, Market street, between 
Nineteenth and Twentieth, pack daily, 
during the season, about 40,000 oysters. 
These are mainly shipped in tin cans or 



no 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



wooden pails to Texas points, and to the 
principal cities in Kansas, Colorado, New 
and Old Mexico and Arizona. They 
employ thirty hands and do upwards of 
$50,000 business a year, more than any 
other concern in the oyster trade here. 
Their fish trade is also considerable. 

The oysters are obtained in Galveston 
bay and along the adjacent coast, and are 
considered as good as any in the land. 
They are furnished the firm by oystermen 
who own small craft and are engaged 
regularly in supplying this market. They 
are the natural produce of these shores, 
no cultivation having as yet been at- 
tempted, although the State grants sixty 
acres free to all who will undertake prop- 
agation of the much esteemed bivalve of 
the prolific Gulf coast. 

Mr, Marsan, who established the bus- 
iness of this house in 1S67, died in 18S7, 
and his partner, Peter Tiboldi, succeeded 
him. Mr. John Puppo afterward acquired 
an interest in the business with Mr. 
Tiboldi. The latter gives his attention to 
the accounts and office business, and Mr. 
Puppo looks after the outside affairs. 

Chas. S. Ott's marble, granite, tile 
and building stone works on Center street 
(Twenty-first), between Market and 
Mechanic, are the longest established of 
the kind in the State. They were 
founded by A. Allen & Co., in 1S43. 
Mr. Ott was a partner with Allen, and 
succeeded him in 1883. He makes a 
specialty of monumental and cemetery 
work, contract stone work and of im- 
ported and domestic tiles, and has three 
men on the road in Texas, selling and 
taking orders for him, and among other 
workmen, expert sculptors, carvers and 
designers. His business last year in all 
three lines aggregated $80,000. 

He executed the contracts for the stone 
work on the Galveston News building, 
Samson Heidenheimer's and Leon 
Blum's residences, the Ball school and 
the John Sealy hospital, which are as fine 



structures as any in the city, and cut and 
erected, among other notable monuments, 
the Governor Davis monument at Austin, 
a Gothic shaft, 40 feet high, that cost 
$7,000, the John Sealy monument, in 
the new cemetery here, an Egyptian obe- 
lisk 33 feet high, and others as costly. The 
B. R. Davis, Hartley and Cronican 
monuments, the most costly and con- 
spicuous in the cemetei^ies of Galveston 
are also his work, and he was entrusted 
with the work of setting up the Kopferl 
monument here, which was made in Italy, 
and is one of the finest memorial groups 
in any American burial place. 

Mr. Ott is a Kentuckian, but has lived 
here nearly all his life. He has been 
doing an excellent business for years, and 
has investments and interests outside his 
business. 

J. W. Byrnes, manufacturer of paving 
blocks and dealer in coal tar and roofing 
material, has offices with the Galveston 
Artesian Well Co., Post Office street, 
between Twenty-sixth and Twenty- 
seventh. His warehouse and factory is 
at Avenue A and Twentieth street. He 
has branch establishments also at Hous- 
ton. vSan Antonio and Fort Worth. 

His plant here comprises a $25,000 
mill for sawing mesquite and cypress 
paving blocks, and a coal tar distillerv. 
He is an importer of West India asphalt 
and deals in roofing paints, and is a con- 
tractor for roofing work and street paving. 
The business streets of Galveston were 
paved by him. He has been a resident 
liere since 1873, and has been in this line 
of business here, and in New Orleans, 
for the last 20 years. 

Mr. Byrnes is engaged in a number of 
other enterprises here also, several of 
which have been already described. 

J. T. McCoMACK, plumber and gas- 
fitter, has been located here in that 
business for the past twentv-five years. 
He came here from New Orleans, of 
which place he is a native. At present 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



Ill 



he is devoting much of his time to his 
work at the residence of Geo. Sealv, on 
Broadway, an illustration of which is in 
another chapter of this volume. Other 
notable work has been done by Mr. 
McComack for the residences of Mr. J. 
H. Hutchings, Col. W. L. Moody, H. M. 
Trueheart, Mrs. Sarah C. Ball, the Ball 
High School building, Harmony Hall, the 
Court House and Jail, and Moody building, 
nearly all of which are illustrated in this 
work. Mr. McComack' s office is at his 
residence on E. Broadway, No. 557. 

The Galveston Show Case Factory, 
Avenue A, between Twenty-third and 
Twenty-fourth streets, is to be fitted up 
shortly with a full complement of ma- 
chinery for the manufacture of show 
cases. This step has been of pressing 
importance for some time. The business 
increases so, year in and year out, that 
hand labor is no longer equal to the 
demands made upon the concern. 

Mr C. Emme, proprietor of this place, 
began business eight years ago. He is a 
native of the city and a cabinet maker by 
trade. He occupies two floors, one used 
as the office and factory, the other as a 
packing and store room. Three salesmen 
traveling throughout Texas and Western 
Louisiana represent him on the road. He 
maintains, for orders to be filled at once, 
a stock of considerable variety. 

Louis E. Sien's Island City Cornice 
and Ornamental Works, Market street 
between Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth, 
was established by him, with a partner, in 
1880. The next year he bought his part- 
ner out and has since continued the 
business alone. He has about twentv 



hands regularly employed, and does more 
cornice work than any one here. The 
iron cornice of the City Hall, the Rosen- 
berg school, Beach Hotel and the John 
Sealy hospital here, of the Central depot 
at Houston, and the City Hall at Laredo, 
is his work, and he has executed contracts 
for points as remote as those of Arizona. 
He has a shop force also making cans for 
the trade here, and he also contracts for 
slate roofing. In this last named line he 
has done work on the City Hall, the 
schools, and other public structures here, 
and has given entire satisfaction. 

In connection with his other business 
he is also engaged as a dealer in stoves, 
tinware, crockery and house furnishings, 
and has sufiicient business to employ two 
delivery wagons. 

Mr. Sien is a native of Illinois, but he 
came to Texas in 1869 and having been 
located here for ten years, he is entirely 
identified with the city in spirit and 
sentiment as well as in business affairs. 

R. H. John's Galveston Steam Trunk 
Factory was established thirteen years 
ago. It occupies the three upper floors, 
43 X 100, of the building at 2216 and 2218 
Market street, opposite the Tremont 
Opera House, and has all the drummers' 
trade of the city. Fine work is his 
specialty, and about a dozen hands are 
regularly employed by him on trunks and 
sample cases. 

This factory is one of the finest in the 
South. Mr. John started here without 
capital and has built up a State trade. 
He is also owner of a similar establish- 
ment at 48 Franklin street, Houston, that 
known as John's Trunk Factory. 



THE STATE OF TEXAS. 




INTRODUCTORY COMPARISONS. 



HE story of Texas should 
be familiar to every 
American. Not alone for 
the superlative spirit of the 
defenders of the Alamo, 
unparalleled even, as its 
memorials declare, by that 
desperate resistance of Ther- 
mopylaj, which had one messenger of 
defeat, while the Alamo had none. Nor 
yet for the triumph of Liberty upon the 
tearless field of San Jacinto. For it is but 
an example of the eternal fitness of things 
that prodigies should precede, and such 
Titanic throes as these attend the birth of 
such a State. But as much for the wise 
abnegation of its founders, when they 
renounced the honors of a precarious sov- 
ereignty for the more substantial advan- 
tages of federation, and as well for the 
enlightened course they pursued with 
respect to education and their public 
domain. For their prescience, in fact, as 
to all the interests of their posterity. 

And while many fine and graphic epi- 
thets have been applied, and many bold, 
and not a few ingenious comparisons been 
drawn, to illustrate the grandeur of the 
State of Texas, but few of these descrip- 
tives quite contrive to do the subject jus- 
tice. For comparisons and epithets, it is 
evident, and marshallings of phrases are 
as inadequate to depicture this majestic 



State — already in its exuberance of re- 
source, as in stupendous length and 
breadth, the State of States, not to speak 
of what it will be in the ripening fullness 
of time — as they are to image that glorious 
epopee of the Lone Star Republic — of the 
Alamo of San Antonio de Bexar, of San 
Jacinto, of Milam, and Bowie, and Crock- 
ett, and Travis, and Houston, by which 
and by whom this incomparable tempor- 
ality was confirmed to the all-conquering 
Anglo-Saxon domination forever. 

The son of this soil may be pardoned, 
then, the State pride that determines him 
to preserve, undivided and undiminished 
and inviolate, his blood-bought heritage 
of Mother Earth ; a heritage which has the 
breadth of ten degrees of latitude and the 
length of fourteen of longitude ; which, 
before the last admissions, measured the 
fourth part of the Federal Union, and is 
yet, excluding polar Alaska, an eighth of 
the whole — 274,356 square miles, 175,587,- 
840 acres, three-quarters of it susceptible 
of agricultural or pastoral production, and 
besides that three-quarters, a mineral area 
larger than all Pennsylvania, and more 
timber lands than the whole of Indiana. 
Which has more grazing lands than all 
Kentucky, more tobacco lands than all 
Virginia, more wheat lands than all Min- 
nesota, more sugar lands than all Louis- 
iana — enough, indeed, the experts say, to 
provide four times what this country con- 
sumes — more cotton lands than all Missis- 
sippi, and more lands equally well adapted 



114 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



to cotton, to grain, or to fruits, than any 
one of these has all told. Which has a 
coast line of 700 miles, whereon and along 
must be located the embarcadei'os for the 
surplus products of the vast plains west 




TEXAS CYPRESS SWAMP. 

of the Mississippi and east of the Rock- 
ies, peopled already with ten millions of 
busy souls. Which might sustain in 
abundance the sixty million people of the 
nation and as many opulent and powerful 
cities as the country has now ; or might 
raise, upon its broad and fertile acres, fif- 
teen million bales of cotton to clothe the 
world, and feed fifty millions of people 
besides. 

Wliich is very much larger than either 
Italy, or France, or Germany, and con- 
siderably greater in area than Austria- 
Hungary, richer in all the natural 
endowments that give to these their com- 
manding position in the industries, fuller 



of every resource but population, and with 
a more even climate than any of them, 
Italy, perhaps, excepted. Which could 
support, as well as these, the pomp and 
power of Caesars. Which has the splen- 
did attributes, in short, of Nature's 
own most favored realms and em- 
pires. 

ArxRICULTURAL Dn'ISIONS. 

Time has dissipated many popular 
fallacies with respect to Texas, 
The extension of railroads, the 
spread of population, the dissem- 
ination of information through news- 
papers and bureaux of immigration, 
have corrected abroad many erro- 
neous impressions of its social con- 
ditions and climate, and of the 
distribution of its arable areas, 
concerning which last matter but 
dim ideas prevailed, until very re- 
cent times, within the State itself. 
The accreting asssessed valuations 
of the State, largely due to the in- 
creased acreage in Western Texas 
farms, is convincing to the man 
who is open to conviction, that even 
the supposed desert of the Staked 
_^ Plain the Llano Estacado of the old 
geographies, all its ancient Spanish 
land-marks obliterated by the plow, 
will respond to tilth with any equal acreage 
of older States. And every day brings 
fresh disclosures of unsuspected fruitful- 
ness in newly furrowed grounds. Certain 
it is that if Texas has not, as predominating 
features, the interminable fens and im- 
penetrable everglades, with their rank 
profusion of primitive flora., that distin- 
guish the Louisiana and Florida lowlands, 
nor at the other extreme the Heaven-kiss- 
ing hills and Felions piled on Ossas of 
Colorado and California, it has still no 
lack of scenic diversity, and all the less of 
waste and barrens, 

Texas may be roughly described as a 
vast plain of irregular contour, extending 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



115 



northwesterly from the Gulf of Mexico, 
with an extreme length of 700, and 
breadth of 500 miles, and rising from the 
sea — imperceptibly, almost, over so great 
a length — to an elevation, at its farthest 
inland limits, of 3,500 feet. The Sabine 
river separates it, in large part, from 
Louisiana on the east, the Red river from 
Arkansas and Indian Territory on the 
north, and the Rio Grande from Mexico 
on the south and southwest. As to its 
physical features, it may be broadly parti- 
tioned into three distinct divisions — the 
flat region of coast lands, 50 to 150 
miles wide ; the middle district of 
undulating prairies, 200 to 300 miles 
wide, and the higher and broader 
western prairies, broken somewhat 
in the southwest by the spui's of the 
Mexican mountains. From an agri- 
cultural standpoint, these divisions 
are sometimes increased to six — the "J 

southern coast, the timbered uplands ^ 

of East and Central Texas, the cen- 
tral black lands, the northwestern 
red loam lands, the western and 
northwestern plains — the latter fur- 
ther distinguished as the "Pan- 
handle of Texas" — and the allu- 
vions of the Brazos and other rivers ; 
which rivers have little navigable 
utility, but are extremely serviceable 
as drainage system for the eastern 
half of the State, through which, for 
the most part, they lead. 

The State has a temperate and a 
more uniform climate than its sub- 
tropical position and vast area seem- 
ingly denote. As between the north- 
ernmost and southernmost points in 
the State, the vai-iations are naturally 
greatest. Districts open to the full 
draft of the dry north wind are the 
coolest. Fort Elliott, in the Fan- 
handle, is one of these ; Denison, on 
Red river, another. Eagle Pass, on the 
Rio Grande, enjoys distinction as the 
hottest place in the State. The coast 



counties have a mean annual average of 
53 degrees ; the State, as a whole, of 60. 
The influence of the Gulf moderates the 
climate of all Texas, and over it the 
periodic " Norther " of the winter season 
is seldom forceful enough to prevail. 
The State, in its entirety, is remarkably 
healthful, and the high prairies of the 
West have an atmosphere that is espe- 
cially dry and pure. 

The annual rainfall varies from fifty 
inches or so along the coast, to forty in 
the central region of the State, and four- 




COTTON PLANTATION, INTERNATIONAL RAILROAD, TEXAS 



teen or sixteen in the extreme West. 
The belt of twenty to twenty-five inches 
of rainfall reaches nearly to the western 



116 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



confines of the State, and those districts of 
the Pan-handle and Staked Plains, for- 
merly mistakenly considered too arid for 
cultivation, it has been discovered, have 
a more seasonable and larger rainfall than 
Colorado, New Nexico, Wyoming, West- 
ern Nebraska and a great deal of Dakota, 
Montana and the Pacific Slope. Water, 
too, has been found almost everywhere 
immediately beneath the surface, so that 
the problem of irrigation is, in many 
parts of the so-called dry lands, almost 
ready-solved. 

The most compactly settled farming 
region of Texas is that lying east 
and north of the Colorado river. 
The characteristic of the coast line of the 
State is its long sand-barred lagoons, in 
many places especially favorable for 
oyster plantations, a fact just beginning to 
be appreciated. Broad savannas afford- 
ing excellent pasturage, as well as swamp 
and timbered tracts, are features of the 
coast lands. The rich district of the 
"Sugar bowl " of Texas lies just south- 
west of Houston and Galveston, and it is 
said that $15,000,000 is invested in cane 
growing and allied industries thereabouts. 

The Central Black Prairie Lands 
stretch from Red river southwest to the 
vicinity of San Antonio, in a belt 140 
miles wide at the north, 100 in the middle 
and 50 to 60 at the south. In this agri- 
cultural division are Dallas, Fort Worth, 
Austin, Waco, and other forward cities 
of the State, and the greater part of the 
cotton crop of the State is raised in it. 

The Northwestern Red Lands com- 
prise in large part the Pan-handle. South 
and west of this region, and west of the 
Colorado river, which flows through 
Southeastern Texas, is the Stock Regiox. 
much of which also is largely susceptible 
of cultivation, and over which the envious 
husbandman already casts a longing eye. 
The counties North and Northwest of 
San Antonio are considered particularly 
well suited for sheep-raising. 



production and valuations. 

The Crop Report ok Texas for the 
year ending August 31st last, is a suffi- 
cient measure of the productiveness of 
these several regions. Texas produced 
during that year 1.300,000 bales of cotton 
valued at $75,750,000; 75.500.000 bushels 
of corn, $28,500,000; iS.Soo.ooo bushels 
of oats. $5,350,000; 5.000.000 bushels of 
wheat. $4,250,000; potatoes, worth $3.- 
000,000; hay, $2,750,000; fruits, $2,300.- 
000; sugar and molasses, $2,200,000; 
garden products, $2,100,000: miscella- 
neous farming staples, such as honey, 
wine, etc., $1,400,000; and in addition 
sheared 16.9S2.245 pounds of wool 
valued at $3,603,406, from 3,466,678 
sheep ; slaughtered 261,550 head of stock 
worth $2,615,500; shipped 625,000 head 
of cattle worth $12,500,000, and 25.500 
horses and mules worth $1,530,000, a 
grand total of nearly $148,000.000, — 
more than the agricultural production of 
the six New England States, Maryland 
and Delaware together. Mr. Julius 
RuNGE, president of the Galveston Cot- 
ton Exchange, who speaks with the 
authority of large experience, estimates 
the market value of the products of the 
soil of Texas for the crop season of 
'89-'90 at $170,000,000. 

Or the wealth of the State may 
be taken as a measure of its fruitfulness. 
The assessed valuation for the year 1S89, 
shown by the official summaries of the 
tax rolls were: Real estate, $480,135,- 
007 ; personal property, $249,040,577, a 
total of $729,175,564, an increase of 
assessed values of nearly $50,000,000 in a 
single year, of $202,000,000 since 1SS3 
and of $507,000,000 since 187 1. As the 
tax assessment is considered generally 
equivalent to little more than fifty per 
cent of the real value of the property 
assessed and what -escapes taxation, these 
figures may be doubled without over- 
stating the truth ; that is to say, Texas has 




I 



118 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 




CATTLE RANCH ON COLORADO RIVER, 
SOUTHWEST TEXAS. 

$960,370,014 of real estate and $498,081,- 
154 of personal property, or $1,458,- 
351,168 total valuation, an increase of 
$100,000,000 in the last year and of 
$404,000,000 in the last seven. In 1879 
the assessed valuations of Kentucky, then 
the foremost Southern State, were $318,- 
000,000 ; of Virginia, $308,000,000, and 
of Texas, $304,000,000. In the race for 
precedence, Texas, in accretions of wealth 
as in population, has fairly distanced 
both these competitors. 

These figures show the average wealth 
per capita of 2,300,000 people in the 
State to be about $634. The summarized 
tax roll exhibits a levy against 115,869,464 
acres of farming land, valued at $335.- 
000,000; town lots, $125,000,000; 7.700 



miles of railroads, $59,000,000; 7.261,- 
769 head of cattle. $47,603,363 ; 1,357,- 
358 horses and mules, $36,650,260 ; 
goods, wares and merchandise, $29,- 
000,000; lands of non-residents (in 
back counties unorganized), $20,000,- 
000; manufacturers' tools, material, 
etc., $9,800,000; money on hand, 
$13,682,371; sheep, 4,280,111 head, 
5.032,293; hogs, 1,120.947; goats, 
544,538, and 8,594 jacks and jennets. 
$2,761,635. 

The State has 
for it, the nomi- 
nal bonded in- 
debtedness of 
$4,237,730, and 
has a surplus in 
its treasury. Its 
tax rate, twenty cents 
on the $100, ad va- 
lorem^ twelve and a half 
cents school tax, fifty cents State 
revenue poll and $1 school poll, 
would produce, upon the assessment of 
last year, nearly $3,000,000 of revenue, a 
sum ample for all the expenses of govern- 
ment, which thus far has been econqmi- 
cally administered. 

As a body politic, it has assets, consist- 
ing of public lands, county bonds and 
school moneys, of nearly $200,000,000. 
Its farm mortgages are only $25,000,000, 
as compared with $701,000,000 in Ohio, 
$620,000,000 in Illinois, and $350,000,000 
in Michigan, and less than those of any 
other growing State. There are 8,500 
miles of railroads in the State, which, at 
the low valuation of $25,000 a mile, are 
worth, in the aggregate, $467,500,000. 

LANDS FOR SALE AND SETTLEMENT. 

The lands available for settlement 
in Texas are Jirst., those open to pre- 
emption ; seco7id^ railroad and State 
capital grants now in market; third., the 
State school lands, and fourth^ those of 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



119 



private owners. Within the first three of 
these classes some 64,000,000 acres are 
comprised, a domain twice as large as the 
State of New York. Not all this is pur- 
chasable, but there is certainly a sufficiency 
for choice. By the terms of her admis- 
sion to the Union, Texas reserved all her 
public lands, and has disposed of some 
32,000,000 acres in aid of railroads, and 
3,000,000 acres to the syndicate that built 
the imposing pile of the new capitol at 
Austin. 

The State, says Land Commissioner 
Hall, has about 35,000,000 acres of com- 
mon school lands for sale, of which, 
perhaps 500,000 acres is valuable 
for the timber on it. It has also 
4,000,000 acres subject to pre-emp- 
tion. The settler on these latter 
must have the lands he takes up sur- 
veyed and recorded at the general 
land office, and must occupy and 
improve them for three consecutive 
years. The whole cost of survey- 
ing and land office fees is about $11. 
The price of the school lands is : 
Dry grazing and agricultural, $3 an 
acre ; watered lands, $3 an acre ; 
timbered lands, $5. Payments ex- 
acted for agricultural and grazing 
lands are one-fortieth cash, balance 
in thirty-nine years, with interest at 
five per cent. Timber lands are cash, 
and minerals found on school lands 
are resei^ved to the State. The State 
has no tide lands for sale. The 
school lands are situated in all parts 
of the State, but chiefly in the south- 
ern, western and northern parts of it. 

Extensive tracts owned by private 
parties are in the market, at prices 
approximating, where they are in 
the same neighboi-hood, those of the 
State lands. Time sales are very 
commonly made by these proprie- 
tors. The following Galveston land 
owners and dealers have such lands 
for sale : The Lasker Real Estate 



Association, page 49 of this work; H. M. 
Trueheart & Co., page 53 ; Seabrook W. 
Sydnor, page 54 ; Hardy Solomon & 
Co., page 53; Blagge, Bertrand & Co., 
page 54, and the Leon & H. Blum Land 
Co., page 83. 

Galveston's infield described. 

The commerce of the port of Galves- 
ton, like the tide of a mighty river, is 
derived from a thousand minor streams 
that combine to swell its current. The 
ramifications of the city's traffic, more 
especially of its importing and exporting 





EAST TEXAS FARM, INTER- 
NATIONAL RAILROAD. 



120 



THE CITY Ot GALVESTON. 



establishments, may thus be traced to the 
remotest parts of the far West and South- 
west, throughout all which region are the 
innumerable springs of trade supplying 
its tributaries. 

But the city has a province of its own — 
an infield rich enough, if its rare resources 
were but half developed, to sustain a 
Galveston of itself. If a semi-circle be 
described inland from Galveston as a 
center, with a radius of a hundred miles, 
it will include within it the whole of ten 
counties of the State and parts of as many 
others. The ten it comprises in whole, 
are the agricultural and timbered counties 
of Chambers. Jefferson, Liberty and 
Orange, north and northeast of the city ; 
Galveston county, Harris, and the Sugar 
Bowl of Texas, the counties of Brazoria, 
Fort Bend, Wharton and Matagorda, 
west and southwest of it. 

The railroads that center at Galveston 
traverse several of these counties and 
and branch out into others, but their navi- 
gable waters, as in that fruitful district of 
Tidewater Carolina and Virginia, known 
as the Atlantic Garden, obviate largely 
the necessity of these artificial highways. 
Galveston, Chambers and Harris counties 
between them encompass Galveston bay, 
and the Sabine, Neches, Trinity, Brazos 
and Colorado rivers, re-enforced by 
numerous large bayous, pass through the 
rest on their way to the sea. In respect 
of the facility with which most of these 
dependencies can be reached by water 
routes, the insular position of Galveston, 
which, perhaps, deprives it of some retail 
trade with the country surrounding it, is 
thus a positive advantage. 

Galveston county comprises, besides 
Galveston island, about 500 square miles 
of the mainland. The three trunk lines 
that have their termini in the city, pass 
through it. It is sparsely populated out- 
side the city, but lately the highlands 
across the bay from the metropolis, have 
been the scene of some speculation in 



realty, that may lead to their settlement. 
Tlnee bayous water it. Onlv about 
10,000 acres of it are timbered. The soil 
generally is a sandy loam. Some cotton 
is grown, but truck farming for the city 
markets is most in favor. Peaches, pears, 
melons and small fruits are easily raised. 

The populous city of Houston, seated 
well to the south, in Harris county, usurps 
a large share of its trade ; but the south- 
eastern parts of it, lying on the west side 
of Galveston bay, and reached from Gal- 
veston by the Clinton ship channel, are trib- 
utary to the city. This district is chiefly a 
cattle country, but it has also many farms. 

Chambers county covers 850 square 
miles and is separated from the Gulf by 
Bolivar peninsula, a spit of land attached 
to Galveston county. Fully a quarter of 
the surface of Chambers is timbered, and 
only an eighth of its arable area is im- 
proved lands. The soil is a dark gray 
loam, averaging of crop product half a 
bale of cotton to the acre, or twenty-five 
bushels of corn, or in cane, two hogs- 
heads. Grapes, oranges, figs and other 
tender fruits are successfully grown. The 
county is largely prairie, carpeted with 
native grass, and, pastured upon it, cattle, 
horses, sheep and hogs are easily and 
cheaply reared. Sea island cotton would 
grow along the shores of the bay, and rice 
in the sedgy lands. The population of 
Chambers, at last accounts, was 3.000, a 
third of them colored. The tax rate is 65 
cents on the hundred. There are 48,000 
acres of school lands for sale in the county. 

Liberty, adjoining Chambers on the 
north, is very much like it in appearance 
and character. It is, as a rule, a prairie 
expanse with woodland along the streams, 
and is chiefly a range for lowing herds. 
It has forests of pine, and cypress brakes, 
from which lumber and cord wood and 
shingles are freighted to Galveston by 
small craft, and while these resources 
appreciate as they do, its growth must 
continue apace. 



122 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 




COTTON I'LATKORM AND COMPRESS, INTERNATIONAL RAILROAD. 



Jefferson and Orange abut Louisiana at 
the southeastern extremity of Texas. The 
Sabine river partitions the great Calcasieu 
lumber district of Louisiana — which prac- 
tically extends over into them — and is 
their eastern boundary, and the Neches is 
the dividing line between them. They 
lie in the greatest lumber district of the 
the Southwest, and they send vast quanti- 
ties of lumber and timbers to market on 
the Galveston levees, by the water passage 
of both rivers, and the estuaries of Sabine 
lake and pass. They have connection 
also by two lines of rail, links of the 
Southern Pacific, and to Galveston, 
another is projected. 

Jefferson covers 1,200 square miles, of 
which 75,000 acres is clothed with the 
finest pine, oak, cypress, ash and hickory 
timber. Its 15,000 acres of improved lands 



are valued at $3 to $5 an acre ; its 531,635 
acres of unimproved lands, seven-eighths 
of them prairie, at $1 an acre. It has 
75,057 acres of school lands unsold. Its 
soil is a black, sandy, producing a half 
to two bales of cotton to the acre, or forty 
bushels of corn. Oranges, bananas and 
figs can be raised with little trouble. 
Salt has been found in the county. The 
population of Jefferson is 3,600, two- 
thirds of them colored. The assessed 
valuations, usually reckoned a half of the 
real equivalent of the property taxed, are 
$3,103,893 ; the tax rate is 43^2 cents on 
the hundred. 

Orange county differs from Jefferson in 
the fact that but a tenth of its 4,000 people 
are colored. It is much like it otherwise, 
however, in its characteristics of soil and 
products, and owing to the fact that it is 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



123 



more densely forested, the price of its 
lands is somewhat higher. Beaumont, in 
this county, is the great seat of the lumber 
traffic of this part of the country. 

While Brazoria is considered the choic- 
est of all the Sugar Bowl, a sketch of it 
will approximately describe the whole 
quaternion ; for they are nearly alike in 
soil, in products, and the golden possibili- 
ties they afford the planter. Fort Bend is 
the smallest of the four; Brazoria slightly 
the largest. It covers about forty miles 
squai-e of prairie, divided unequally by 
the winding course of the Brazos, and 
is intersected by streams whose banks are 
umbrageous with native sylva of many 
kinds. Along these streams are sugar 
and cotton and corn lands as prolific as 
any on the face of the earth. It is not too 
much to expect that when capital has 
been applied to bring this district under 
thorough cultivation, it will enrich the 
city in greater degree than all the rest of 



its surroundings. Steamers ascend the 
Brazos as far as Columbia, thirty miles 
inland, and connect there with a branch 
of the International railroad ; the Santa 
Fe takes its northward course through 
Brazoria and Fort Bend, and the Southern 
Pacific through both Fort Bend and 
Wharton. 

The four counties of the sugar belt of 
Texas embrace 3,000,000 acres of alluvial 
lands especially adapted to the growth of 
the sugar cane. They ai'e all abundantly 
provided with fuel-woods for use in boil- 
ing sugar. The results attained in this 
industry here, quite equal the best in the 
lowlands of Louisiana. The business is 
conducted chiefly on as large a scale and 
the system pursued is much the same. One 
plantation in Fort Bend county, with 9,000 
acres in cane, has $325,000 invested m its 
lands and plant. It has 435 employes — 
convicts mostly, hired from the State — 
and works a hundred teams in the season. 










_...^^„,,, 



RANCH, MmLAND TEXAS. 



124 



THE CITY OF GALVESTOJS. 



Its daily expense is $700. It produced, 
last year, 3,000,000 pounds of sugar and 
1,016.500 gallons of syrup, all which was 
taken by one Galveston house. 

Unimproved lands in the Sugar Bowl, 
suitable for cane culture, are worth $3 to 
$10 an acre, according to location. Lands 
with improvements and a milling equip- 
ment, are worth $30 an acre and upwards. 
Some lands, with proper drainage and 
cultivation, produce two hogsheads to the 
acre. The cost of preparing land for cane 
is about $5 an acre ; of the seed cane, 
$20 an acre. A planting will last, with 
proper care, four years. For cultivation, 
$7 an acre is estimated, and for cutting 
and manufacturing, about $10 an acre. 
Conducted with judgment and vigor, 
sugar making can be made the most 
profitable business of the State. There 
are lands enough for it, in the vicinitv of 
Galveston, to supply vastly more than the 
consumption of the Union. 

TIMHKR, MIXES, MANUFACTURES AND 
HARBORS. 

The most valuable pine forests of 
Texas lie mostly between the Trinity river 
and the eastern State line. There are 
other extensive forests of pine in Eastern 
Texas, but their woods are of an inferior 
merchantable quality. The demand, 
already large, of the treeless country west 
and northwest of this supply, and of 
Northern Mexico, makes it of more than 
ordinary importance. It was estimated, 
in 18S0. that of long leaf pine alone, these 
Eastern Texas forests had twenty billion 
feet standing, and that besides, there were 
other pine woods making the timbered 
area of I'exas twice as large as that of 
Alabama and Mississippi combined. 
Hardwood timbers likewise abound in 
many parts of Eastern Texas. The 
timbered acreage of the State, at last 
accounts, was 46,303,000 acres; the tim- 
ber standing, of all kinds, 67,508,500,000 
feet. 



The advancement of Texas in manufac- 
tures has been nearly as notable as in 
agriculture ; but, until recently, the enter- 
prise displayed in this direction was chiefly 
that prompted by local exigencies, and no 
attempt had been made to explore its 
mineral areas in the interest of its indus- 
tries. The State, however, has now 
undertaken a thorough geological survey, 
and the preliminary investigations of its 
bureau, disclose already as amazing an 
affluence of dormant resource within the 
bowels of the land, as there is to be 
garnered upon its surface. In addition to 
the petroleum, and salt, and guano, and 
gypsum, and fire clay deposits, the gran- 
ite, marble and other valuable building 
stones of the State, discovery has been 
made of silver and gold, and of natural 
gas and iron fields and copper ledges of 
extraordinary magnitude, and three great 
coal beds, one in the center of the State, 
having 20.000 square miles area, one on 
the Rio Grande of 3,700 square miles, 
and a third underlying fifty-four counties, 
have been defined. 

Dallas and Fort Worth have already 
awakened to the prospect of manufactur- 
ing eminence unfolded for them by the 
iron and coal beds lying in juxtaposition 
in the counties west and southwest of 
them. Capital in both cities has embarked 
in coal mining in these contiguous dis- 
tricts, and in railroad projects to render 
them accessible. San Antonio and Aus- 
tin, both of which Nature has equipped 
with available water power sites, have a 
vital interest in their development; and 
the progress of Laredo has been vastly 
accelerated by the special advantage that 
citv enjoys, of coal mines adjacent. 

The State, in the last decade, has 
passed through a stage of transition. It is 
still largely an agricultural and pastoral 
commonwealth, but it has been fruitful 
also in these maturing years, of important 
mechanical industries. By the census of 
iSSo, Texas had $9,350,000 invested in 




\ ' ^i«<^ 







II 



.wUA 




126 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



manufactures, and an annual product of 
$20,000,000. It is to be within bounds to 
say that these figures have doubled since. 
The tax assessment of last year, on manu- 
facturing plants, implements and materials 
alone, in Texas, was $9,855,427 itself. 

In the list of the State's productions, 
lumber is third. At a convention of the 
lumber men of the State, held recently at 
San Antonio, a capitalization of $100,- 
000,000 was represented. The cotton 
seed oil mills of Dallas, Palestine, Hous- 
ton and Galveston rank among the largest 
in capacity, of the country. Cotton and 
woolen mills have lately been established 
at several points in Texas — one at Dallas, 
and another, just receiving its finishing 
appointments, at Galveston. Local organ- 
izations of capital are prosecuting both 
these ventures. Fort Worth, Denison 
and Laredo are undertaking concerns of 
the same kind. Refrigerating and beef 
packing plants have been put in operation 
at Victoria and Fort Worth, by the Stock- 
men's syndicate, and one is contemplated 
also for Galveston. The flour mills of 
Fort Worth, Dallas and Galveston are of 
the first order of equipment. 

There are unlimited opportunities 
afforded, throughout the State, for other 
manufacturing concerns : In the pine and 
cypress and furniture woods and building 
stones of the State ; in the countless 
beeves and the profusion of fish and oys- 
ters and fruits for canning and packing ; 
in a superfluous store of hides for tanning, 
and incidentally for the products of 
leather ; in a superabundance of bone and 
horn ; in iron and copper and salt and oil 
and sugar and coal and water powers. 
Galveston, with its facilities as a market 
for foreign and domestic coals, its ample 
supply of excellent water, its cheap sites, 
and its shipping coiiveniences by land and 
sea, is an inviting spot for such enter- 
prises, and quite a number have been 
founded there of late. 

The configuration of the continent 



clearly establishes the Texas coast region 
as maritine province for all the great 
West beyond the Mississippi. Commerce 
already clamors for poi'ts along the Gulf. 
But Nature, lavish of her bounties of soil 
and climate and mineral wealth, has been 
niggard of havens for the white winged 
messengers of the deep blue sea. Accord- 
ingly the work of harbor construction has 
been undertaken at four points on the 
shores of the State: At Sabine Pass, on 
the dividing line between Louisiana and 
Texas, so as to make a roadway for the 
vast lumber traffic of the great forests of 
both States ; at Galveston, which is 
assured the rank of a port of the first class, 
with thirty feet of water, by special appro- 
priation of government funds ; at the 
mouth of the Brazos, where private capital 
is engaged in making a ship channel, and 
at Aransas Pass (terminus of the San 
Antonio & Aransas Pass Railroad, and 
very nearly too of the Mexican National), 
for which project the government is 
sponsor also. The time is not far distant 
when the avenues between the trade cen- 
ters of twenty States and Territories west 
of the Father of Waters, and the great 
world beyond seas, will be shortened from 
200 to 1,900 miles, or an average of 650. 

POPULATION, CITIES, SCHOOLS. 

Texas has a population variously esti- 
mated, pending the national census of 
1890, between the figures 2,300,000 and 
2,700,000. The State has been peopled 
largely by a steady migration into it, from 
all the older and more crowded States. 
This colonization has proceeded of late at 
a rate equaling the settlement of the 
Northwest a few years back. And these 
homogeneous accessions have immensely 
expedited growth. With it the lesser 
foreign admixture, chiefly frugal and 
thrifty Germans, has been all the more 
readily assimilated. The Spanish-Amer- 
ican element of San Antonio and the 



\ 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



127 



border is fairly lost in the stream of 
humanity now dispersed over all the 
State, and the negro, proportionately less 
numerous than in any of the old slave 
States, is likewise less here of an impedi- 
inent to progress. 

Although Western Texas is rapidly 
settling up, the great bulk of the popula- 



tion of the State is massed in the district 
about 350 miles wide, extending the length 
of its Eastern border. In this division 
was raised the million and a third bale 
cotton crop of 1889, and its diversified 
industries sustain, as in old Spain, seven 
notable cities, the port of Galveston, 
Houston at tidewater, San Antonio and 




FOREST PKIML\ VL, L Vb 1 IKXAi,. 



128 



THE CITY OF GALVESTON. 



Fort Worth, the outermost ot the seven, 
Waco, the most central, Austin, the State 
capital, and Dallas. The aggregate pop- 
ulation of these, by the State reports of 
'87, was 300,000. It is very likely now 
100,000 more. Others there are also of 
minor but growing importance, Denison, 
Sherman, Paris and Gainesville, chiefly 
among them. The border towns of 
Laredo and El Paso are also rapidly 
attaining to prominence. The rapid met- 
ropolitanization of these rising cities of the 
State is a manifestation of the energy, in- 
telligence and forward aspiration of Texas. 
The Texan has doubtless acquired a 
certain individuality from his environment. 
The race does everywhere. But as 
between the settled portions of the State 
and its sisters of the Union generally, it 
would be difficult to define the differ- 
ences there are of social aspects. The 
same spirit of respect for law, religion, 
opinions, pervades the mass here, as there. 
As liberal support is given to press, 
schools and institutions. The household 
gods and domestic virtues are as generally 
cherished. And as all traces of the war are 
now obliterated, so also sectional spirit is 
blotted entirely out. Other issues — issues 
of greater concern to Texas, demand con- 
sideration. And the very speed of its evo- 
lution the more rapidly antiquates the past. 



The public school system of the State 
was established by the foresight of the 
fathers of the Lone Star Republic, which 
preceded it, upon a most enduring foun- 
dation. The reservation of lands for public 
education is 3,542,400 acres granted the 
various counties and 29,000,000 held by 
the State, which, valued at $2.50 an acre, 
is $81,355,000. Besides this there is 
invested in land notes, bonds, and cash, 
for the benefit of the schools and vmiversi- 
ties of the State, $19,700,000, so that the 
State's school fund is over $100,000,000, 
a munificence that accords with its own 
material grandeur. 

The pro rata expenditure by the State 
last year for schools was $4 a head, or 
$2,182,460 for the 545.616 children of 
school age in the State. About seventy- 
five per cent of these attend, and 12,000 
teachers are retained to instruct them. 
The Texas University, located at Austin, 
and the Agricultural and Mechanical Col- 
lege, situated at Bryan, have their own 
endowment funds, and the State maintains 
two Normal schools, the " Sam Houston," 
at Huntsville, for whites, and a colored 



institute at Praii-ie V 



Permanent 



provision has been made also for public 
asylums for the blind, the deaf and 
dumb, the orphans, and the lunatics of 
the State. 




INDEX TO GALVESTON TOPICS. 



PAGE. 

Adoue & Lobit, bankers..-. "15 

Aggregate jobbing business 16, 77 

Aggregate manufacturing production 99 

Aguilo, J. B. & Co., commission merchants 88 

American National Bank 43 

Angell, C. E. & Co., insurance 57 

Ansell, W. C, Manager the Texas Ice & Cold Storage 

Co 109 

Arrivals and departures of transient vessels 63 

Art, letters, masie, etc 27, 28 

Astall, Jesse, iron works lOS 

B 

Baldinger Bros., crockery 96 

Ball, Ilutchings & Co., bankers 44 

Ball School, The 22, 23 

Banks of Galveston 40 — 49 

Bar of Galveston Harbor 64 

Bay of Galveston described 5, 65 

Beach at Galveston 10 

Beers, Kennison & Co, insurance agents 57 

Blagge, Bertrand & Co., real estate and insurance 54 

Blum, Leon & H., dry goods dealers and cotton 

factors SI 

Blum, the Leon & H. Blum Land Co 82 

Brown, the J. S. Brown Hardware Co 88 

Browne, Edmond, slater of Houston and Galveston 94 

Building Improvements 55 

Byrne, R. T., agent the Mutual Reserve Fund Life 

Association 60 

Byrne & Jones 93 

Byrnes, J. W., paving contractor and roofing works. .100, 110 

C 

Cannon, F. & Co., importers, grain shippers and com- 
mission merchants 86 

Capital in manufactures 16, 99 

Capital in wholesale trade 16, 77 

Christie, G. R., agent the Protection Oil Co 95 

Citizens Loan Co., The 47 

City government 18 

Clarke, Chas. & Co., stevedores and contractors 67 

Clayton, N. J., architect 55 

Coastwise trade of Galveston 62 

Colored population of the city IS, 22 

Compresses of Galveston 74 

Conyngton Business College, and the Texas Phono- 
graph Co 26, 27 

Cotton trade of Galveston 74 

Coutant, J. W., manufacturers' agent 87 

Cross, T. L. & Co., ship chandlers 73 

D 

Dalian, Chas., wholesale liquors 95 

Davis, B. R. & Co., furniture dealers 96 

Description of the city 5—30 

Dun, R. G. & Co.'s Mercantile Agency, E. H. Gorse, 

manager 98 



P.iGE. 

Emme, C, Galveston Show Case Factory ill 

Equitable Life Insurance Co., Ladd M. Waters & Bro. 

agents 58 

Exports of Galveston 16, 63 

Exline & Grueudler, the Galveston Wool Scouring 

Mills 104 

FT 

Facilities of the port 63 

Fire department, Galveston 19,56 

First National Bank 42 

Foreign Commerce of Galveston 63 

Fowler, Capt. Chas., agent the Jilorgan Steamship 

line 13, 71 

G 

Galveston Artesian Well Co is, 100 

Galveston Bagging & Cordage Factory 103 

Galveston Coal Co., The, F. C. Jeffery, manager 94 

Galveston Cotton AWoolen Mills 102 

Galveston harbor 5, 65 

Galveston in history 10—17 

Galveston National Bank 41 

Galveston Oil Mills, The 107 

Galveston packing companies 99 

Galveston's back country 119—124 

Galveston's future 17 

Galveston Show Case Factory, C. Emme, proprietor... Ill 

Galveston Steam.ship & Lighter Co 66 

Galveston Wool Scouring Mills, Exline & Gruendler, 

proprietors 104 

Goggan, Thos. & Bro., piano and music house 28, 89 

Gorse, E. H., manager R. G. Dun & Co 98 

Government work in progress at the entrance to Gal- 
veston harbor 5, 65 

Grain shipments inaugurated 64 

Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe railroad 36 

Guinard, C. M. & Co., insurance 58 

H 

Hardy Solomon & Co., real estate 53 

Hawley & Heidetiheimer, importers of coflfee and 

dealers in sugar 86 

Health and sanitation 17 

Holmes, C. D., grocer and ship chandler 98 

Hotels of Galveston 30 

Houston & Texas Central R. R 35 

Hutchings, J. H., of Ball, Hutchings & Co 44 

I 

Imports of Galveston I6 

Insurance agents of Galveston 57 

International & Great Northern R. R 31 

Island City Cornice & Ornamental Works, L. E. Sein, 

proprietor m 

Island City Manufacturing Co., Sass & Weis, proprie- 
tors 101 

Island City Savings Bank, The 43 

Island of Galveston described 5 



130 



IXDEX, 



J 

PAGE. 

John, R. H., trank factory Ill 

Jeffery, F. C, Manager the Galveston Coal Company... '.t4 

I> 

Ladf], W. F. & Co., cotton buyers 76 

Lanimers & Flint, cotton and wool factors 76 

La-sker Real Estate Association, The 49 

Large jobbing concerns of Galve.ston 7, 77 

Leith, L. C. & Co., coal dealers 69 

Lee Iron Works, The 108 

Levy, J. & Bro., stablemen and undertakers 97 

Levy, M. M., manufacturers' agent ,S6 

Lighterage at Galveston 60 

Living at Galveston 29 

Loan agencies, Galveston 17 

IVI 

Mallory line of steamers, J. N. Sawyer & Co., agents 70 

Marsan, J. B. & Co., oyster packers 109 

Marwitz, II., ship chandler and grocer 7.3 

McComack, .1. J., plumber 110 

Menard, J. M. O. & Co., insurance 57 

Mensing Bros. & Co., factors and grocers 7, 80 

Moller, J. & Co., ship agents 68 

Moody, \V. L. & Co., bankers and cotton factors, 45, 46, 47, 53 
Morgan Steamsliip Line and Houston Direct Naviga- 
tion Co., Capt. Cha.s. Fowler, agent 71 

Mutual Reserve Fund Life A.ssociation of X. Y., R. T. 

Byrne, agent 60 

N 

National Bank ofTcxas, W. L. Moody, pr&sident 42 

Neptune Ice Co., The 109 

New banking concerns 40 

New cotton mills 102 

New manufacturing enterprises 99 

New rope walk 99 

Newspapers of Galveston 27 

New York steamship lines 71 

Nicolini, Capt. C, ship chandler and grocer 73 

O 

Opportunity for manufactures at Galveston 99, 124 

Ott, Chas. S., marble works 110 

Pagoda Baths, The 19 

Palmer & Rey, type founders of San Francisco, O. 

Paget, agent 96 

ParkctMcRae, coal dealers 94 

Perkins, A. J. &. Co., lumber dealers 92 

Pollard, W. H. & Co., dealers in bricks, lime and 

masons' material 92 

Port charges, Galveston 66 

Progress of Galveston 16 

Proposed bridge to the mainland 39 

Protection Oil Co., C. B. Pettit & Co., G. R. Christie, 

agent 93 

R 

Railroads of Galveston 31 

Ratto, Lang & Weinberger, wholesale fruits and con- 
feet ionerj' 87 

Real estate agents of Galveston 52 

Real estate market, Galveston 50 



r.VGE. 

Redfield. the Redfield Co., building material 94 

Resorts of (Julveston 19 

Reymershott'er, J. Reymershofifer's Sons, grain com- 
mission 107 

Rice, Boulard <t Co., paints, oils, etc 85, 86 

Rogers, J. S., manager the Texas Co-operative As.soci- 

ation S3 

Rosenberg, H., banker 22, 47 

Rosenfield, J., wholesale notions 85 

S 

Sawyer, .1. N. & Co., agents the Mallory line of N. Y. 

steamers 71 

Schadt, Wra., building material 93 

Schools of Galveston 22—27 

Sehott, J. J., wholesale and retail druggist 97 

Sealy, George, of Ball, Hutchings & Co 45 

Sealy. the John Sealy hospital 29 

Sein, L. E., the Island City Cornice Works Ill 

Ship agents of Galveston 68 

Society and people of Galveston 28 

Sorley, James Sorley, Stubbs & Co., insurance agents.. 58 

St. Marj-'s Infirmary 29 

Street railroads of Galveston 19 

Sugar trade of Galveston 77 

Sweeney & Co., stevedores 67 

Sydnor, SeabrookW., real estate 54 

T 

Taxes, revenue and debt 18 

Taylor Compress Co 74 

Texas Co-operative Association, P. of H., J. S. Rogers, 

manager S3 

Texas Ice & Cold Storage Co., W. C. Ansell, manager.. 109 

Texas Land & Loan Co., The 47 

Texas Mutual Fire Insurance Company S3 

Texas Phonograph Co -V 

Texas Star Flour Mills, The 10.')— 107 

Trade in transit, Galveston 16 

Tramp steamships 6 

Truck Farms of the Island 5 

Trueheart, II. M. & Co., real estate o2 

U 

Ursuline Convent, The -4 

V 

Variety anddiversityof Galveston 's manufactures 99 

Vessels registered at Galveston 63 

W 

Wallis, Landes & Co., cotton factors and wholesale 

grocers 83 

Water supply IV, W 

Waters, Ladd M. & Bro., agents the Equitable Life 

Insurance Co 58 

Weis Bros., wholesale dry goods 84, 85 

Wholesale and jobliing trade of the city 16 

Wiley & NichoUs, warehousemen and transfer agents.. 97 
Willis, P. J. & Co., drj- goods, cotton and general 

merchandise '8 

Wool trade of Galveston 77 

Z 

Zahn, Justus, photographer 28 



INDEX TO TEXAS TOPICS. 



PAGE. 

Agricultural divisions of Texas 114—116 

Agricultural productions of Texas 110 

Assessed valuation of Texas 110 

Cattle, horses and sheep in Texas .• 118 

€horography of Texas 114 

Cities of Texas 1'-" 

Climate of Texas 115 

Coast lands of Texas 116, 119 

Coast line of Texas 126 

Cotton crop of Texas 116 

District adjacent to Galveston 119—124 

Eastern Texas incidentally mentioned 116, 127 

Endowments for Education and Eleemosynary pur- 
poses 128 

Epic character of early history of Texas 113 

Farm Mortgages of Texas '. 118 

Founders of the Lone Star State, foresight of. 113, 128 

Fruit growing in Texas 119 



History of Texas referred to.. 
Homes for all in Texas 



Immigration into Texas and the Southwest, and its 

character 126 

Incidental references to Texas 4, 10, 30, 52, 100 

Iron and coal in Texas 124 

Lands for sale and open to pre-emption in Texas 118 

Liberal terms for public lands of Texas 118 

Magnitude of Texas 113 

Market gardening opportunities, Galveston County 52 

Minerals of Texas and geological survey of the State... 124 



PAGE. 

Misconceptions as to Texas corrected 114 

Panhandle lands of Texas 116 

Population of Texas, estimates of 126 

Portsof the Texas coast 126 

Prices of Texas State and other lands 118 

Principal crops of Texas, and the value of them in 

1888, a measure of its fruitfulness 116 

Public domain of Texas 118 

Railroad lands for sale in Texas 118 

Railroad mileage in Texas 118 

Rainfall of Texas 115 

Rivers of Texas 115 

School lands of Texas 128 

Seven cities of Eastern Texas and their progress 127 

Society in Texas 127 

Staked Plain of Texas 116 

State government economically administered 118 

State pride of the Texans 113 

Stock raising in Texas 118 

Sugar Bowl of Texas and investment in siigar industry 116 

Tax rate in Texas 118 

Texas contrasted with other States and countries 113 

Texas land and loan agencies with offices at Galves- 
ton 119 

Timbered area of Texas 124 

Valuable forests of Texas 124 

Value of wool clip, 1888 116 

Vast deposits of coal and iron in Texas 124 

Wealth of the State 116 

Western Texas, character of lands in 116 



NOTES AND CORRECTIONS. 



Page i6. — " Output of manufactures, 1889," should read, " capital in 
manufactures." 

Page 50. — " Manufactures," third line second column, should read, 
" capital in manufactures." 

Page 62. — The total tonnage clearances of 1889 were, 492,677; an 
increase of more than a third over 1888. The value of cargoes cleared in 
'89 was $51,558,115. 

Page 64. — As to "grain shipments inaugurated," credit should be 
given to J. Reymershoffer's Sons for 70,000 bushels shipped last June. 



C| CXiLu^^.A.AZe/\y<^ ^ tX.^-t^c_<si..<3^. 



4 



•Ll ^^ 189.9 








1. Galveston Brietl\- Described. 

2. Galveston as a Railroad Center. 

3. Banking, Loans, Real Estate, Insurance. 

4. Maritime Trade of the City. 
y Cotton Trade of the City. 

6. General Trade of the Cit>'. 

7. The City's Progress in Manufactures. 

8. The State of Texas. 



With Illustrations Showing the Architecture and Appearance of 
Galveston, and the Scenerv of the State. 



Edited by Andrew Morrison for Geo. W. Engelhardt. 

Copyrijihted 1890. 



"^yRiNTi N6 j:oC^^ 



I F. Ap '09 



«>fC 6 »«• 



